Scenario 2:  Van marked “Police” races past me and runs a full red light while I stop.  This was a “work detail” van – roadside trash collection with prison labor. No burglary in progress.  No crime to prevent.  Just a red light to run.

For whom are rules, laws and processes created?

Are they only created for those of us who are ruled, governed, managed or directed?

Or, are they created for all of us?

Think of this the next time you in management create a rule, process, directive, mandate, etc.  Are you to be subjected to this same set of policies?  Are you part of the picture?  Or, are you just a glorious ruling body, passing down dictates that you don’t have to follow and won’t follow?

Never trust a disembodied ruler.  Never trust someone who pours medicine down your throat while they keep their own teeth clinched behind tight, pursed lips.

Well, the old rules came back, didn’t they? 

Now, we hear the same message: “The old rules don’t apply.”  Stocks only go down, income only goes down, house prices only go down.  How long do beans and rice last in storage?  No one will buy, no banks will survive, nothing works.  The old rules don’t apply.  No one to lend, no one to borrow, no assets, no future.  We are on the cusp of a new economy – everything is new and different.  The old rules don’t apply.

Well, the old rules will come back, won’t they?

They will.  The rules never really went away. We just forgot them.  We just subdued them. We just didn’t grasp the bigger picture of economic cycles and waves and mistakes and remission and recovery and rebirth.

The underlying economic, social, cultural, political and ethical rules are a lot harder to change than we give them credit for.

The rules still apply.  Ride the current economic wave with dignity and with perspective.  The rules are still there, and they are still at work.  We are not the ones who will break the system.  We are not.

1. Complexity – How hard is it to use one of these techniques? How much work do I have to do to make it work for me?

1. Linguistic Power – What do I get in return for my hard work? How close can I come to representing the real language dynamics that real speakers use when talking about business rules?

The research analyzes each alternative approach and advises on how users and rule developers can optimize the complexity-versus-linguistic-power dichotomy.  Watch for the research, and if you have any comments, fire away.

Business Rule Representation: A Tradeoff of Complexity and Linguistic Power

Source: Gartner

Tutorial: Business Rule Management — The Misunderstood Partner to Process

David McCoy and Jim Sinur – Gartner

Outline

1. Opening slide on the proliferation of business rules and the wisdom of using BRM
2. Gartner Key Issues slide
3. Distinguishing business rules from business processes, and the challenges of managing implicit rules
4. Example of BRMS-to-application interaction showing segregation of responsibilities
5. A spectrum and guideline for selecting which business rules should be managed by BRM and which are likely overkill
6. Key BRM definitions and concepts
7. Business Process Management hype cycle showing rules topics and where they are on the cycle
8. Examination of BRM maturity and benefits
9. Three different kinds of business rule technologies and their primary use cases
10. Business rule market evolution overview
11. Business rule representation techniques and “value/complexity” tradeoffs
12. Business Rule Management System (BRMS) technology stack – what’s in it according to Gartner?
13. How BRM can address BPM process proliferation
14. BRM technology trade-offs – how much do you really need?
15. BRM roles and skills and how they overlap BPM
16. BRM and Agility: awareness, productivity, flexibility and adaptability
17. Key Takeaways
18. Recommendations

If you are willing to talk, let me know your plans and expectations.  Jim Sinur and I have a research position on this, soon to be published.  We know what we see happening and what we think is going to happen, but it never hurts to get another bit of corroborating evidence, or to be told we are completely wrong.

Either way, we thank you in advance…

UPDATED on 30 October -  When I talk about building your own BRE, I mean, “coding specific, custom logic to process a collection of business rules in any fashion instead of using an existing BRE to process those rules.”  This means that I am not just asking for examples of building a RETE-based (or other algorithm-based) complex business rule engine.  I still want those, but I am also asking about scenarios where you are building any alternative to a traditional BRE, regardless of its power or lack thereof.  Also, if you are extending an open source BRE (e.g., DROOLS) that is of interest as a “build.”  Finally, I am not interested in the basic IF-THEN-ELSE processing that we all do anytime we write software.  Thanks to James Taylor for his post which triggered my decision to update the original query.

So…

PRESS - If you are a member of the press and want to talk about the implications of the merger or the bigger consolidation picture, contact either Jim, Marc Kerremans or me.  John Kost’s team can talk to you about the government angle.

GARTNER CLIENTS – If you are a Gartner client, read our recent research on Business Rule consolidation, especially the piece called: A Business Rule Market Checkup (G00152976).  If you need help understanding this event, give your client services team a call to set up an inquiry.

NON-CLIENTS – If you are not a client, but wish you were, you can read what I told Forbes when IBM acquired ILOG a few months ago.

Now, I need to get back to painting my ceiling (writing this at 8:30pm) before the brush dries and before the bear comes by for a snack.  Ah, life in the big city – torn between M/A and painting the ceiling.

He said a lot today.  The one thing I want to focus on was his statement, “you reap what you sow.”   He said it in reference to the current economic struggle, and I tend to agree with him.  We do reap what we sow.

We in The South love sayings like this.  Most little boys and girls grow up hearing these sayings and we never forget their power. These homilies have a way of summing up great truths.  The great truth is that you can’t keep violating the rules and expect to come out ahead. 

“Rules” – oh, great… he’s worked that topic in there.  Sure, I have.  We’re now witnessing the carnage from a period when the rules were ignored, bent, revamped or just plain broken.  We had people saying, “The old rules no longer apply.”  Well, now that the bottom has fallen out, what are we hearing?  We are hearing the 180-degree storyline: “Punish the rule breakers!  Enforce the rules!  Rules! Rules!”  Why does everyone run back to the very thing that was so hated and ignored?  Perhaps because we are trying to grab hold of the great truths? 

Here is the secret of rule management:  Don’t wait until the crisis is upon you before you pay attention to the rules.  If you keep your eyes on the rules, you won’t have to play catch-up in the end.  A local Atlanta comedian, Ludlow Porch, once said (paraphrasing) – “If you break the big rules, you have to replace them with a lot of little rules.”  We broke the big rules (invest in quality; watch out for fads; use credit wisely) and we replaced them with a lot of wishful thinking, broken logic, and a lottery mentality – weak little rules that weren’t really rules at all. 

You do reap what you sow.  How are rules treated in your enterprise?  If rule management is not so hot where you come from, consider that you might want to investigate a reconstruction of your own.  Note: we capitalize “Reconstruction” down here… it was painful and we learned a lot of valuable lessons from all the rules we broke so long ago – you reap what you sow.

Here are the search results from October 20, 2008 (quote-delimited term, unfiltered results).  The percentages represent the relative “popularity” split between the paired terms.

• “business rules management” – 64%
• “business rule management” – 36% 

• “business rule management system” – 60% 
• “business rules management system” – 40% 

• “business rules engine” – 74% 
• “business rule engine”- 26% 

• “rules engine” – 61%
• “rule engine” – 39% 

Even though the plural seems to dominate, I prefer the singular as in “business rule X” – business rule management, business rule engine, business rule management system.  I will continue to prefer the singular until I see all these phrases in everyday use, by otherwise smart people:

• Ice creams shop – Hey! All those flavors… must be plural, right? [162 hits on Google]
• Pests control company – Yes, I do want more than one pest controlled, thank you. [9 hits on Google]
• Dentists office – That just sounds silly.  It also sounds scary since that is where I will be tomorrow. [Way too many hits on Google even if many of them are the plural possessive form ending in s']

Caveats: My review is limited to English, and to my own preferences.  As you read my Gartner research, expect to see the singular, until I start writing about Business Processes Management… almost too revolting to imagine.

As usual, all opinions welcomed and many tolerated.  There is likely a simple explanation for all this, but I tend to think we are just seeing the laxity of language at work – an irony since rules are all about semantic precision.  Oh well!  Or, would “Oh wells!” be more appropriate?

What would you add to a BRM tutorial?  What are some of the things that vex you or your clients?  What topics or concepts need clarification?  We might reserve a few slides to address these concerns, or we may create a list of “watch out!” topics based on your input.  Here is your chance to speak up.

Leave comments here, or email me at david.mccoy [at sign] gartner.com.  Note, email address harvesting forces me to write my email in pictograms.  We look forward to your input.

My usual research response has been to remind you that your tax code and all your laws are written in natural language (”oh… I see your point.  I never could understand that deduction for the profits on excess mineral rights that can be claimed by part-time fishermen who install solar panels on their second homes in July.”)  No, I won’t go there.  Instead, let me tell you about some tires I bought.

The tires are great!  My wife and I love them.  And we thought we loved the financing scheme the company gave us.  Here is what it said on the contract:

“6 months no interest/minimum payment required”

Wow!  Six months and we don’t have to pay interest or make a minimum payment.  I like that rule.  Well, we threw away the first bill and when we got the second bill, there was a charge for failing to make the minimum payment.  Come again?  I called the bank behind the promotion and they said the rule should be read as (a) 6 months no interest but (b) a minimum payment is required.  This is the natural language pitfall – semantic interpretation.

Folks, where I come from – a slash tends to be read as an “or” and distributes the verb uniformly.  This is equivalent to an airport warning, “no knives/handguns allowed.”   No one in his/her (I had to do it) right mind would interpret that to mean: (a) no knives but (b) handguns are allowed.  Try explaining the logic behind that interpretation as you wait for your orange jumpsuit and a new roommate at the nearest prison.

In a rare stroke of customer service luck, the agent immediately agreed with my interpretation.  Perhaps he is a closet linguist.  He waived the fees and in return, I am just going to send in the whole payment and pretend this event never happened.  I love those tires.  I no longer love the financing scheme.

In defense of NL, if you allow poor or ambiguous grammar you are asking for trouble.  The NL rule tools do a great job at clarifying the ontology and enforcing proper grammar.  And NL has its place. But my point is simple.  If you think natural language is a universal panacea, you are in for a surprise. We learned too much from the days of AI to forget that. 

Gartner clients: watch for our research in Q1. NL is just one of the rule representation approaches we will be reviewing in detail.