In part one of this article, I provided an introduction to applying the concept of sustainability to business rules. I specified that “Sustainable Business Rules” are rules that:
- Can be managed, maintained, supported, and will hold up over time.
- Provide the necessities of the business and can be nurtured as business changes.
- Remain affirmed as valid and can be strengthened with new facts.
In part two of the article, I will discuss:
How can Sustainable Business Rules be achieved?
There are several key ways in which Sustainable Business Rules can be achieved. These include looking at changes in roles, changes and improvements in processes, and improvements in tools:
Changes in roles
1. The stewardship of business rules is clearly defined and can be returned to the Business from IT (if applicable).
2. The role of IT can change in a business rules system to be the facilitator of the overall automation.
3. The Business team can make the rule change; IT can act as the enabler for a rule change only when it’s necessary.
- a. For most rule changes, no IT involvement should be required.
- b. When a rule change involves a software change, a virtual team is created based upon the IT impacts that are identified to enable the rule change.
- c. The Business is still responsible for analyzing the impacts of rule changes and for implementing the change.
Changes and improvements in processes
1. Separation of workflow, processes, data, business rules and application implementation is possible.
2. Requirements, design, and implementation models reflect business rules as a discrete artifact.
Improvements in tools
1. Business rules management vendor tools are evolving in the areas of repositories, traceability, and methodology integration. In order to achieve Sustainable Business Rules, rule repository features and functionality will need to extend fully into rules management.
2. I would like to offer some suggestions for requirements for future rule management tool offerings that will make it easier to achieve sustainable business rules. These will need to be considered in any rules management tool, if they are not currently provided in a particular tool offering:
- Include implemented (executable) and source rules (at both business and specification levels) with traceability (bi-directional). Allow storage of all source rules regardless of where and how they are implemented.
- Allow for rule pattern analysis (at all abstraction levels).
- Allow for rule family analysis and rule change impact analysis.
- Rule validation and verification aids and techniques (at all abstraction levels).
- Links to process (at model and implemented levels).
- Full featured glossary (including contextual definitions).
- Rule grammar editor (implements rule grammar rules such as RuleSpeak guidelines from BR Solutions).
- Rule spell checker (including full integration with glossary –such as pull downs of available terms, link from terms in rules to definitions to allow lookup of meaning).
- Extensible (such as the ability to add/modify rule attributes).
- Rule metadata from a business point of view that applies to a group of rules beyond the categories attributes and rule topic. Provide a better model of rules – essentially common conditions that apply to a group or family of rules – look at object model for rules. Provide ability to denote the various contexts of a rule derived from the generalization of the rule.
- Ability for Business Rules Analyst to enter both high level business rules (in business terms) as well as lower level technical rule specifications based upon various rule templates. Provide aids for rules discovery when rules are first being captured and refined.
- Decision tree viewing of more complex rules.
- Ability for Business Rules Analyst to unit test rule at the source rule level.
- Integration with reference data tables utilized by rules (including versioning of reference tables for auditing purposes).
3. A standard business rule metadata format is needed across vendors – allowing best-of-breed compatibility between business rules tools and engines.
4. Automated rules testing tools will need to mature for both business user and IT use at various levels of testing (unit testing, systems testing, customer testing, and regression testing).
Challenges for Business Rules Vendors
Business Rules Vendors of rules management tools, rule methodologies, and rule engines have many challenges ahead. As more companies begin new business systems development projects incorporating a business rules approach, there will be higher expectations for mature and integrated products from these vendors. The OMG Business Rules initiatives will also provide significant influences on the product offerings of these vendors.
1. The rules management functions need additional vendor focus and investment to support implementation efforts. This can be accomplished in several ways:
- Rule Management tools stay independent of Business Rule Engine (BRE) tools. They provide bi-directional integration with BRE tools including Rules Maintenance Applications.
- BRE Vendors continue to expand the scope of their tools to include more complete rules management capabilities.
2. Rules methodologies need to continue to evolve and remain independent of Business Rule Vendors. One option is to create an open source project for rules methodology.
This approach would provide opportunities for anyone with interest to make contributions to the ongoing development.
Summary
Sustainable Business Rules further allow the business to adapt quickly and respond to changes in the business with more flexibility. Significant advances in rules technology innovation, adoption, and assimilation will continue to enable the possibilities and potential of achieving sustainable business rules.
In part three of the article, I will look at the details of the characteristics of Sustainable Business Rules.
