Jim Sinur

In a changing world, the challenge that faces organizations and the IT departments that support them is the ability to change quickly. Changing business rules rapidly around scenarios becomes a crucial survival behavior, going forward. It makes no difference if these rules are in people’s heads, departmental web-sites and/or computer based systems rules will need to be made explicit going forward. In a time that bodes well for immediate change and change for the foreseeable future, rules that are buried will be a huge drag on organizations and even threatening their ability to thrive.

We need to make an effort to define business rules as “implicit and explicit business decision points (for example: requirement, constraint, option, mandate) that guide or direct business actions.” Why implicit and explicit? For example, implicit rules refer to business logic that is embedded in system code. In fact, most rules today are implicit. Implicit means “contained in the nature of something though not readily apparent.” Just because a business rule is buried away in code or is a policy that has been applied over decades within an enterprise, it does not mean that they are not rules, or rules to be followed. However, unlike explicit rules that have been exposed, clearly defined and documented, implicit rules are difficult to harvest, document, manage and evolve. This will kick of a new discipline around business rule management (BRM)

We have a need for exposing and managing business policies and procedures so that they can be treated as business managers intended them to be treated… as corporate assets and first class citizens across the business applications that they touch. Of course, not all rules are worthy of these efforts and I would suggest organizations do a volatility analysis on key systems and jobs that could affect organizations in critical scenarios.

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Category: BPM Business Process Improvement Business Rules     Tags: BPM, Business Process Improvement, Business Rules

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