Organizations sometimes just have plainly silly rules. I bet you know of some yourselves. In this month's column, Ron Ross shares a classic example. Read and enjoy!
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In a previous article, "Overview of Analysis Techniques," the Top Five analysis techniques were covered with a promise to provide an overview of additional techniques used by process analysts. This month, Kathy Long covers some of the other analysis techniques and outlines a variety of typical problems found in business processes, aligning those to the techniques introduced in this article. She also briefly discusses which process modeling techniques are the most useful, depending on the type of problem and type of analysis being used
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The "Zachman Framework" is quite popular, and (not uncommon for something that has been used and explained for over two decades) some of the evolved descriptions have drifted from being true to intended meaning. Is The Framework a metamodel? (Yes.) Is The Framework a methodology? (No!) In this month's column, John Zachman provides his concise definition of just what The Zachman Framework is (and is not).
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In this series of articles, Terry Halpin has been discussing ontology-based approaches to modeling, with a main focus on popular ontology languages proposed for the Semantic Web, such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF), RDF Schema (RDFS), and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Last time he discussed negated facts in OWL and avoiding circularity when declaring subproperty chains. In this thirteenth instalment, Terry provides a detailed comparison of the ways in which OWL 2, ORM, Barker ER, UML 2.5, and relational databases support simple identifiers.
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Organizations often struggle with how to provide estimates on the time required to harvest business rules within a particular project scope. While there is no pat formula, after providing estimates for literally hundreds of business rules projects, Gladys Lam has found that there is a standard set of questions that she asks. In Part 2 of this two-part article, Gladys provides the baseline formula and guiding principles for estimating the time required for a business rules harvesting project.
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Rules decrease freedom and so must the patterns used for rule statements. RuleSpeak and the conventions used by SBVR's Structured English impose some restrictions on our use of language, but due to the flexible nature of natural language there is still a lot of freedom, and therefore variability, in the expression of rules. In this month's issue of the 'Rule Observatory', Silvie Spreeuwenberg shares with you her observations on the balance between freedom of expression versus the restrictions that come from using rule sentence patterns. What rule patterns are you using?
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Consider this interesting enigma. On one hand, Business Rules are gaining momentum due to the need for Agility in automated systems. On the other hand, despite wide appeal and adoption, the Agile methodology has hardly been applied to BRMS. Is there a way to combine both aspects of modern agile systems? In this month's column, Carole-Ann Matignon shares her thoughts on this.
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The recently-approved 1.1 version of the SBVR-standard has adopted concept terminology for the business-side artifact previously known as a 'fact model', terming it now a 'concept model'. Why should the Business Analyst care? Thomas Frisendal, who has worked with 'concept maps' for business analysis for the past decade, explains, "Concept maps and concept models are roughly on the same level of abstraction. I am certain that the considerable benefits of business concept mapping will support the SBVR concept model and will make it even easier to get SBVR concept modeling into the value chain of many organizations." In this month's feature, he explains the whats and whys of concept mapping and concept modeling.
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In this second series on writing natural language rule statements Graham Witt takes a holistic and systematic approach to writing natural language rule statements. Last time, Graham looked at the effects of the time dimension on a wide variety of data rules. In Part 11 he looks at an often overlooked type of rule, the data item format rule.
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A revision of the SBVR (“Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules”) specification was approved by the Object Management Group’s Architecture Board on March 22, 2013. This month our Standards Reporter, Donald Chapin, announces this major milestone and recaps the points this revision focused on
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In the previous articles in this series, we constructed the core of our business rule statement by building a simple sentence (subject + verb + object) using a concept model as our guide. Now, as the concluding Step 8, Kristen Seer shows us how to examine the set of rules as a group to ensure that they are logically consistent.
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Even after twenty years in the business of helping organizations with their Business Processes, Roger Burlton found that he experienced challenges in attempting to explain what a Business Process was in a way that all could agree was simple and workable. The Business Process Manifesto grew from those challenges. Over a three-year period, multiple versions of the Manifesto were circulated to members of the Business Process community, who provided rigorous (and sometimes brutal) feedback on the latest iteration. Each time the Manifesto was edited to refine it into a set of professional principles that all could relate to and derive benefit from. In this month's In Process column, Roger Burlton introduces this important new work to the community at large.
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Tabular models for decisions is a powerful technique highly relevant for business rules, business processes, business knowledge, and related areas. The now-familiar technique has a long and rich history dating at least to the 1950s, with a milestone standard in the 1980s and a continuous evolution in the nineties and up to the millennium. In this month's column, Jan Vanthienen presents Part 3 in the series that brings the reader up-to-date on the rich history of tabular models for decisions. Jan summarizes the principles, constraints, and best practices when modeling decision tables that were proposed in the eighties and nineties, based on extensive use of the decision table technique in a large number of environments and application areas. The requirements on structure, form, and layout emanate from the need to effectively use systems of decision tables as a well-structured technique across various application areas.
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Several recent publications have popularized the topic of "Decision Modeling" — the modeling of business decision logic for and by business users. The OMG has just released an RFP for a Decision Model and Notation (DMN) specification, but that document says little about how DMN might relate to SBVR and BPMN, and there are many open questions. How do SBVR rules relate to decisions? Is there just one or are there multiple decisions per SBVR rule? Is there more to say about how SBVR and DMN relate to BPMN? This month, Mark Linehan and Christian de Sainte Marie provide their perspective on DMN and how it is positioned in the context of the SBVR and BPMN specifications.
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