untitled
Premise and Conclusion
How Rules and Processes Relate
Part 2. Business Processes
by Ronald G. Ross
At time
of this writing, I am not aware of any standard industry definition for business
process. Like many, I would heartily welcome a good one. The best
I have seen is:
Business process: the tasks required for an enterprise
to satisfy a planned response to a business event from beginning to end with a focus
on the roles of actors, rather than the actors' day-to-day job[1]
An important direction for many companies today is managing business activity
on more of a beginning-to-end, value-add basis. That requires thinking cross-organizationally
about fundamental business processes. What can rules do for business processes?
Roger Burlton, a noted industry expert on applied business modeling techniques, says
it this way: "If you separate the rules, you can develop remarkably stable
processes." If you are looking to manage business activities on a process
basis that's exactly what you need. He goes on to say: "The really
rapid change is in the rules ... not in the business processes."
Yes!
How do rules and business processes interact? Burlton observes that
business processes "... transform inputs into outputs according to guidance
-- policies, standards, rules, etc...." The key phrase in that is according
to guidance. Exactly what does it mean?
Definitive answers suited to the business
perspective have recently emerged.[2]
Oversimplifying just slightly, 'guidance' means rules of two fundamental categories,
as follows.[3]
- Structural rules organize (i.e., structure) basic knowledge
of the business, always carrying the sense of logical necessity or impossibility.
A structural rule can be ill-conceived, misunderstood, or misapplied, but it cannot
be directly violated.
- An operative rule can be violated directly by people involved
in affairs of the business. Operative rules govern the on-going conduct of
business activity, always carrying the sense of obligation or prohibition.
How Structural Rules Relate to Business Processes
Let's start with structural
rules, whose relation to business process is a direct one. They simply
off-load work pertaining to knowledge. There are at least two ways in which
this happens:
Computation. Computation rules provide the business logic to perform
any calculations that can be encoded. Such computation logic can be highly
complex, involving many rules.
Decision Making. Inference rules can determine the proper outcomes
at decision points ('branch points') in a business process. Such decision-making
rules can range from simple (e.g., has this product been discontinued? or
is this a repeat customer?), to quite complex (e.g., is this insurance
claim potentially fraudulent? or what is the best of available job position
for this applicant?). Complex cases can involve large numbers of inference
rules. All such logic can be off-loaded from the business process.
Aside: This off-loading does not have to happen all at once.
In other words, you do not have to know and encode all the rules in advance.
In anyone says so -- nonsense! For example, a decision point may be
handled manually at first, and only later be automated using encoded inference rules,
as time, cost, and feasibility permit. To say this differently, business rule
systems are quite good at supporting continuous improvement methodologies.
How Operative Rules Relate to Business Processes
Now let's look at how operative rules
relate to business process. As mentioned above, operative rules
are ones that people can violate. In a game of football, operative
rules are why you need referees on the field during each game -- someone to watch
and intervene if any violations occur. Operative rules, which arise anytime
people are involved (not just knowledge), are a distinctive feature of the
business rule approach.
Operative rules monitor on-going work as it occurs in the business process.
The particular aspect of work they monitor ranges from specific to quite general:
Iteration. Business processes often involve iteration (loops).
Timing and repetition criteria for these loops can be expressed as rules. Examples
include:
Maximum time allowed between iterations.
For example: Additional information must be requested at least every
5 days if appropriate information is not received.
Minimum time allowed between iterations.
For example: Additional information must not be requested more
often than every 24 hours.
Maximum iterations permitted.
For example: The total number of requests made for additional information
for a claim must not exceed 10.
Maximum time permitted for completion.
For example: Requests for additional information for a claim must not
be made after 10 days.
Service Level Agreements. A service level agreement generally involves
four things: (1) an action item, (2) a party, (3) escalation criteria, and
(4) timing criteria.
For example: A customer service request must be brought to the attention
of a supervisor if the request is not resolved within 4 hours. In other
words: (1) the action item customer service request (2) must be brought
to the attention of a supervisor (3) if not resolved (4) within
4 hours.
Aside: This rule statement really isn't in atomic form, but for the
sake of sticking to the main message, I'll ignore that here.
Compliance. A business process can involve hundreds of rules (or
more!) addressing specific things people need to do to comply with business
policy and/or external regulation. A business process cannot possibly address
that many rules directly, especially if it's developed with a goal of managing business
activity on a cross-organizational basis.
Aside: Actually, that would be even more difficult than it would
seem at first glance. Most rules involve two or more events where they
need to be evaluated. Consider the rule: A customer must be assigned
to an agent if the customer has placed an order. This rule involves two
events: (1) When a customer places an order (an obvious one), and (2)
When an agent leaves the company (a less obvious one). A business process
that focuses on fulfillment of customer orders is very unlikely to address that second
event.
What should the business do? Do what comes naturally
-- maintain a separate rulebook, as in football. This rulebook gives
the guidance that business processes should follow.[4]
It should be automated using a knowledge-smart work environment that business people
and analysts can use directly to manage business rules at the business level. That
way a business process model can focus on the vital thing it needs to do -- give
a planned response to a business event from beginning to end.
Excerpted from Chapter 6, Business Rule Concepts: Getting to the Point
of Knowledge (Second Edition), by Ronald G. Ross. www.BRSolutions.com (September 2005). ISBN 0-941049-06-X.
Reprinted with permission.
References
[1] Janey Conkey Frazier (Swimlane Process Maps), actually
given originally for workflow. 
[2] In particular based on: Semantics of Business
Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR), by the Business Rules Team, August 2005.
Available to OMG members at www.omg.org
as bei/2005-08-01:
BRT's revised submission to the Object Management Group's (OMG) Business Semantics
of Business Rules RFP. For background on the SBVR and the consortium
that produced it, refer to "A Brief History of the Business Rule Approach,"
Business Rules Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1. Available at www.BRCommunity.com/a2005/b216.html 
[3] For more, see Chapter 5, Business Rule Concepts:
Getting to the Point of Knowledge (Second Edition), by Ronald G.
Ross, September 2005. ISBN 0-941049-06-X - www.BRSolutions.com- 
[4] This is the notion of Rule Independence. The
need for Rule Independence, and for business-people tools to support it, is given
by: The Business Rules Group, Business Rules Manifesto ~ The Principles of Rule
Independence, ver. 1.2 (Jan. 8, 2003). Available at www.BusinessRulesGroup.org (in English as well as translations
to numerous other languages). 
| standard citation for this article: |
| Ronald G. Ross, "How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 2. Business Processes,"
Business Rules Journal, Vol. 6, No. 11 (Nov. 2005), URL: http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2005/b256.html |
|
|
about
. . .
RONALD
G. ROSS |
Ronald G. Ross is recognized internationally as the "father of business rules." He has Chaired
the annual Business Rules Forum since 1997. He was a charter
member of the Business Rules Group in the 1980s, and an editor of two landmark BRG papers,
The Business Motivation Model and the Business Rules Manifesto.
He is active in standards development, with core involvement in SBVR.
Mr. Ross is Executive Editor of BRCommunity.com and its flagship publication, Business Rules Journal.
He is author of eight professional books, including Business Rule Concepts (2009),
a just released 3rd edition of his popular, easy-to-read 1998 handbook. Mr. Ross speaks frequently at industry events worldwide.
Mr. Ross is Co-Founder and Principal of Business Rule Solutions, LLC and is actively engaged in consulting,
training and research. He co-developed RuleSpeak®. Mr. Ross gives highly regarded public seminars in North America
through AttainingEdge and in Europe through IRM-UK.
For additional information about Mr. Ross, please visit his personal website at www.RonRoss.info.
|
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February 2012
What's Really Needed to Align Business and IT Part 1: Creating True Business Solutions
By: Ronald G. Ross
January 2012
Concept Model vs. Fact Model vs. Conceptual Data Model; Just a Matter of Semantics?
By: Ronald G. Ross
December 2011
Business Rules: Basic Principles
By: Ronald G. Ross with Gladys S.W. Lam
November 2011
Know-How Models: How Business Rules, Decisions, and Events Relate in True-to-Life Business Models
October 2011
Business Analysis with Business Rules
By: Ronald G. Ross with Gladys S.W. Lam
September 2011
How Business Processes and Business Rules Relate
August 2011
Decision Analysis (Part 3): Defining Scope
July 2011
Decision Analysis (Part 2): The Basic Elements of Operational Business Decisions
June 2011
Decision Analysis (Part 1): What Kind of Decisions?
May 2011
How Long Will Your Fact Model Last? — The Power of Structured Business Vocabularies
April 2011
More on the If-Then Format for Expressing Business Rules: Questions and Answers
March 2011
Operational Business Decisions
Whose Decisions Are They Anyway?
February 2011
The Anatomy of Decisions
The Business-Rule View
January 2011
Why Rulebook Management? Because Software Requirements and Business Rules Simply Aren't the Same!
December 2010
Introducing Question Charts (Q-Charts™) for Analyzing Operational Business Decisions: A New Technique for Getting at Business Rules
November 2010
Agility Based on Business Rules
It's Just Common Sense
October 2010
Five Tests for What Is a Business Rule?
September 2010
Can a Business Rule Be Enforced Differently in Different Contexts?
August 2010
How Far Can You Take Decisioning?
July 2010
Business Rules vs. System Design Choices
June 2010
Four Useful Constructs for Developing a Structured Business Vocabulary: Special-Purpose Elements of Structure for Fact Models
May 2010
Eight Things You Need to Know About Fact Types Bringing Verbs into Structured Business Vocabulary
April 2010
Business Vocabulary: The Most Basic Requirement of All
March 2010
What Is a Business Rule?
February 2010
CRUD in Business Rules: Accident-Prone Decision Logic
January 2010
The Point of Knowledge
December 2009
When is an Exception Really an Exception? The Business Rule Principles of Accommodation and Wholeness
November 2009
Verb-ish Models for Verbalization: Give Us Back Our Verbs!
October 2009
From Rulebook Management to Business Governance: Where Business Rules Fit
September 2009
What You Need to Know About Rulebook Management
August 2009
When Is a Door Not a Door? ~ Basic Ideas of the Business Rules Paradigm
July 2009
General Rulebook Systems (GRBS): What's the General Idea?
June 2009
Becoming Strategy-Driven: The Policy Charter
May 2009
Product Quality and a Longer-Term View: A 'Simple' Matter of Business Policies
April 2009
RuleSpeak® Sentence Forms: Specifying Natural-Language Business Rules in English
March 2009
The Rulebook: To Play Ball You Need Rules
February 2009
Extreme Business Agility (Part 6): A Manifesto-in-Progress on the Semantic Re-Engineering of Products
January 2009
Extreme Business Agility (Part 5): The Optimal Edge of Business Performance
December 2008
Extreme Business Agility (Part 4): Change Deployment Hell
November 2008
Extreme Business Agility ~ Part 3: Examples of Non-Agile vs. Agile Business Capabilities
October 2008
Extreme Business Agility ~ Part 2: A Semantic Approach to Re-Engineering Your Company's Products
September 2008
Extreme Business Agility — Part 1: A Value Chain for Re-Engineering Your Company’s Products
August 2008
My Son, Business Rule Analyst — Governance and Compliance Through Young Eyes
July 2008
Rules vs. Processes (Again) — Part 2: Now for Events
June 2008
Rules vs. Processes (Again) — Part 1: There’s Simply No Need for Confusion
May 2008
Legacy Modernization, Semantics, and the Knowledge Economy ~ Have You Connected the Dots Yet?!
April 2008
The Emergence of SBVR and the True Meaning of ‘Semantics’: Why You Should Care (a Lot!) ~ Part 2
March 2008
The Emergence of SBVR and the True Meaning of ‘Semantics’: Why You Should Care (a Lot!) ~ Part 1
February 2008
The Phoenix Strategy ~ A Lower-Risk Approach to Rejuvenating Systems and Legacy Modernization
January 2008
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December 2007
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November 2007
The Latency of Decisions ~ New Ideas on the ROI of Business Rules
October 2007
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September 2007
The Value of Decisions ~ New Ideas on the ROI of Business Rules
August 2007
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July 2007
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June 2007
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May 2007
Are all Rules Business Rules? Not!
April 2007
Are Software Requirements Rules? Not!
March 2007
Are Integrity Constraints Business Rules? Not!
February 2007
From Rule Management to Business Governance, Part 4: Governance Engineers and the Chief Governance Officer (CGO)
January 2007
From Rule Management to Business Governance, Part 3: Re-Engineering the Governance Process
December 2006
From Rule Management to Business Governance, Part 2: Governance and How it Relates to Business Rules
November 2006
From Rule Management to Business Governance, Part 1: Governance and How it Relates to Business Rules
October 2006
Rules and Processes: Examples Showing How They Relate
September 2006
The Meaning of Things: Definitions, Intensions, Rules, and Extensions
August 2006
Re-Vitalize, Don't Just Re-platform! ~ Three Tests for Whether Your Company 'Gets It' with Respect to Re-Platforming Business IP
July 2006
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June 2006
A Personal Insurance Saga ~ The Economics of Business Rules
May 2006
Concepts, Definitions, and Rules: RuleSpeak® Practices
April 2006
The RuleSpeak® Business Rule Notation
March 2006
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 6. Point-of-Knowledge Architecture (POKA)
February 2006
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 5. Scripts -- Rule-Friendly Process Models
January 2006
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 4. Business Processes vs. System Processes
December 2005
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 3. Three Best Practices for Designing Business Processes with Rules
November 2005
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 2. Business Processes
October 2005
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 1. The Challenges
September 2005
Rule Quality ~ The Route to Trustworthy Business Logic
August 2005
Decision Tables, Part 2 ~ The Route to Completeness
July 2005
Decision Tables, Part 1 ~ The Route to Consolidated Business Logic
June 2005
Rule Reduction ~ The Route to Atomic Business Rules
May 2005
Essence Definitions and Business Rules ~ Developing Stable Anchor Points for Operational Knowledge
April 2005
Can You Violate Structural Rules? (part 3) ~ The Difference Between Breaking Rules and 'Breaking' Knowledge
March 2005
Can You Violate Structural Rules? (Part 2) ~ The Difference Between How to Compute and How to Behave
February 2005
Can You Violate Structural Rules? (Part 1) ~ The Difference Between Violations and Bad Decisions
Janauary 2005
Business Rules and Knowledge Workers ~ Getting to the 'Point of Knowledge'
December 2004
Can a Definition be Violated? ~ Definitions and Business Rules
November 2004
Rustling Up Good Definitions ~ There's a Lot Less and a Lot More to It
October
2004
Clarifying
Clarifications ~ Universal 'And' to the Rescue
September
2004
Relearning
the Basics of Communicating ~ Business Semantics and Business Rules
August
2004
The
Light World vs. the Dark World ~ Business Rules for Authorization
July
2004
Best-Fit
Decision Points ~ How They Fit into the Business Rule Approach
June
2004
What
Rule Independence Means to System Models ~ Less
and More than You Think!
May
2004
The
Semantics Lexicon ~ Terms For The Business Rules / Smart Process
April
2004
Don't
Reinvent Rule Engines!
March
2004
Rules
And Compliance Tactics
February
2004
Tracing
the Path of Rule Reduction
December
2003
Do
Rules Decompose To Processes Or Vice Versa?
November
2003
Should
You Encapsulate Knowledge in Modeling Real-World Things?
October
2003
Business
Rules, Encapsulation, and Models of the Real World
September
2003
Business
vs. Environment in Business Models
August
2003
Requirement
Statement vs. Rule Statement
July
2003
Rules
as Constraints: On or By the System
Design?
June
2003
Rules
Reveal Events -- Not Actions
May
2003
Actions
Are Not Rules (and Vice Versa)
April
2003
The
Definitions of 'Business Rule' and 'Rule'
March
2003
Business
Problems Addressed by the Business Rule Approach
January
2003
About
the Business Rules Manifesto ~ The Business Rule Message in a Nutshell
November
2002
Business
Rules for the Company's Provisioning Processes ~ There’s a Lot More to
Reference Data than Just Data!
September
2002
The
Terminator -- I'll be Back (with Just the Right Term)
July
2002
What
Does it Mean to be Business-Driven? (Part 2)
May
2002
What
Does it Mean to be Business-Driven? (Part 1)
March
2002
A
Telltale E-mail Trail: The Case for
In-Line Business Rule Analysis
January
2002
Managing
M x N Vs. M + N, Market-Driven Economies, and Other eCommerce Issues (part 2)
November
2001
Managing
M x N Vs. M + N, Market-Driven Economies, and Other eCommerce Issues (part 1)
September
2001
The
BRS Rule Classification Scheme
July
2001
Minding
Your P's and Q's
May
2001
RuleSpeak"!
-- Templates And Guidelines For Business Rules
March
2001
Business
Rules In Business Processes ~ Title Rules For Process And Rules For
Product/Service
January
2001
What
Is Rule Management About?
November
2000
Let's
Make a Deal: A Killer App for Business Rules
September
2000
The
Re's Of Business Rules
July
2000
What
Are Fact Models And Why Do You Need Them? (Part 2)
May
2000
What
Are Fact Models And Why Do You Need Them? (Part 1)
March 2000
What
is a 'Business Rule'?
January
2000
Current
Thoughts On Expressing Business Rules
November
1999
The
Fin de Siegle Legacy Mindset
September
1999
Analysis
Paralysis Just May Save Your Life
July
1999
If
We Had Started Coding Already...
May
1999
Your
Core Business Processes Need a Rule Engine
March
1999
Who
or What is a True Business Analyst?
January
1999
Four
Things Wrong with the Way We Develop Information Systems
November/December 1998
Push-Type Data Hub vs. Pull-Type Data Warehouse
By Ronald G. Ross
September/October 1998
What Knowledge Management is About (And What it Has To Do With Business Rules)
By Ronald G. Ross
May/June 1998
The Next Great Leap Forward ~ About the Changes You See
By Ronald G. Ross
March/April 1998
Business Rules as Customer Interface
By Ronald G. Ross
January/February 1998
Components and Business Rules: Do They Connect?
By Ronald G. Ross
November/December 1997
The Policy Charter: A Small-Sized Picture of the Big Picture
By Ronald G. Ross
September/October 1997
Implementing
Application Packages: Is There A Better Way?
By
Ronald G. Ross
July/August 1997
'Why'
is Why Business Rule Methodology is Different
By
Ronald G. Ross
May/June 1997
Never-ending
On-the-Job Training
By
Ronald G. Ross
September/October 1996
Re-Usability
in the Business Rule Approach
By
Ronald G. Ross
March/April 1996
The
Newest Idea In Business Rules: Rules Normalize!
By
Ronald G. Ross
January/February 1996
An
Open Letter to DBMS Vendors: We Need Active Database Systems
By
Ronald G. Ross
May/June 1995
The
Greatest Irony Of The Information Age: Business Rules
By
Ronald G. Ross
November/December 1995
Business
Rules:
Knowledge For Knowledge Workers
By
Ronald G. Ross
March/April 1994
"Play
Ball!"
By
Ronald G. Ross
November/December 1988
The
History Of Steam-Powered Ships
By
Ronald G. Ross
January/February 1994
"Business
Rules, At What Cost?"
By
Ronald G. Ross
May/June 1994
Business
Rules: Birth of a Movement
By
Ronald G. Ross
July/August 1991
Why
I Like the Zachman Framework Architecture"
By
Ronald G. Ross
March/April 1997
Business
Process Re-Engineering
By
Ronald G. Ross
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