Business Rules and the Design of Business Processes

Written by Ronald G. Ross on February 4, 2016. Posted in Business Analysis, Business Processes, Business Rules

Sample behavioral business rule: A customer that has placed an order must have an assigned agent.

• If the business rule is violated in performance of the process ‘Take order’, then the process (activity) ‘Assign agent’ should be (optionally) invoked automatically so the violation can be corrected immediately (by the appropriate actor).
• In performance of the process ‘Retire agent’ (which hasn’t been mentioned!), if the business rule is violated – i.e., the retiring agent is assigned to some customer who would thereby be left agent-less – the process (activity) ‘Assign agent’ should be (optionally) invoked automatically so the violation can be corrected immediately (by the appropriate actor).

• It’s highly misleading to say ‘business rules are part of processes’. No, not really. (I run into that statement all the time.)
• We’re not designing processes today in a very intelligent way. Designers shouldn’t have to think, ‘O.K., which process (activity) has to come first because of the business rules?’. That approach forces us into sequences where no natural sequence is meaningful. In any case there are far too many behavioral business rules for it to be practical.

Tags: behavioral rules, business events vs. business rules, business process design, business processes, business processes vs. business rules, designing processes, events, process design

Ronald G. Ross

Ron Ross, Principal and Co-Founder of Business Rules Solutions, LLC, is internationally acknowledged as the “father of business rules.” Recognizing early on the importance of independently managed business rules for business operations and architecture, he has pioneered innovative techniques and standards since the mid-1980s. He wrote the industry’s first book on business rules in 1994.