Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence

TURNING OPERATIONAL KNOWLEDGE & COMPLIANCE INTO A COMPETITIVE EDGE

We systemize tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge

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Business Rule Analysis: Practitioner MasterClass Series

Location: Online Seminar Overview Do your business processes always produce correct and consistent results? If not the problem probably lies with your business rules and decision logic. Business Analysts need the right techniques to fix these problems – process models, use cases, data models and other requirement techniques just aren’t right for the job. This hands-on series will equip you with proven techniques for success. More info: http://www.attainingedge.com/online-training-business-rule-analysis-masterclass.php Register for full series!

Session 1. The why, what and who of business rules

Next Session: October 1, 2013 @ 10:30am – 12:00noon (ET)

  • Why business rules
  • What benefits you can achieve
  • What business rules are, and are not
  • Business rules vs. business processes
  • Kinds of business rules: definitional vs. behavioral
  • How the business should react to violations
  • Business rules and decisions
  • What skills you need to capture business rules effectively
  • What you need to know
Register Session!

Session 2. Eight steps to find and capture business rules

Next Session:October 1, 2013 @ 3:30pm – 5:00pm (ET)

  • Capturing business rules from people’s heads
  • Capturing business rules from great big documents
  • Using facilitated sessions
  • Step-by-step approach
  • What about reverse-engineering business rules from code
  • Do’s and don’ts
Register Session!

Session 3. Eight steps to express clear business rules

Next Session: October 2, 2013 @ 10:30am – 12:00noon (ET)

  • Business policies vs. practicable guidance vs. automated rules
  • The role of business vocabulary
  • Step-by-step approach
  • Clarity and completeness
  • Eliminating ambiguity
  • Addressing exceptions
  • Guidelines
  • What to avoid and why
Register Session!

Session 4. How to analyze and communicate business rules

Next Session: October 2, 2013 @ 3:30pm – 5:00pm (ET)

  • Basic principles for rule analysis
  • Rule quality
  • Handling conflicts
  • Developing business reactions to violations
  • Simplification – When, why and for whom
  • How to validate business rules with business people and SMEs
  • Verification – Examples
Register Session!

Session 5. Eight steps to set-up decision tables

Next Session: October 3, 2013 @ 10:30am – 12:00noon (ET)

  • When to use decision tables
  • How to set up decision tables
  • Decision tables and business process models
  • What your decision tables should not do
  • Decision tables and business vocabulary
  • Best practices
  • Alternative formats
  • Completeness, subsumption and conflicts
Register Session!

Session 6. Ten steps to start or refine your business rules projects

Next Session: October 3, 2013 @ 3:30pm – 5:00pm (ET)

  • Business rules and requirements
  • Properties of business rules
  • Traceability of business rules
  • Retaining corporate memory
  • Managing the life cycle of business rules
  • Business rule management – examples
  • Business rules and rule engines – implementation examples
  • How to get started
Register Session!

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Looking to Find Out What Decision Analysis is About? Make Business Processes & Business Architectures Smart? Design Business-Friendly Decision Tables? Write Business-Friendly Business Rules? >>> Free downloads …

As part of the April announcement of the new 4th edition of my book Business Rule Concepts: Getting to the Point of Knowledge, I’m pleased to make available some additional complementary (and complimentary!) downloads: Decision Analysis – A Primer: How to Use DecisionSpeak and Question Charts (Q-Charts) – 49pp http://www.brsolutions.com/IPSpeakPrimers (free) Decision Tables – A Primer: How to Use TableSpeak – 121pp http://www.brsolutions.com/IPSpeakPrimers (free) Tabulation of Lists in Rulespeak®: A Primer Using “The Following” Clause – 16pp http://www.brsolutions.com/IPSpeakPrimers (free) We’ve comprehensively written-up state-of-the-art experience and insight in these important areas. I hope you will make the most of them! P.S. Do have a look at other items of interest: http://goo.gl/WPV7O  

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Attn: All ‘Capability’ Advocates – Where’s the Proof?! No Imponderable Opinions Please!

I asked: What is a Business Capability? How Do Business Rules Relate? The Missing Man in Business Capabilities? http://goo.gl/JLLdx Ralph WhittleGuest Post by Ralph Whittle, independent consultant This is a most interesting topic, but one I fear will NOT yield answers to your questions. Considering all of the LinkedIn “capability advocates” who have actively participated in other various discussions, why have they NOT responded to your posting during its six months listing? Perhaps the “capability advocates” have realized that they can respond to your posting, but ONLY with indeterminate comments, and these are NOT real answers! At the end of their typical response, you will still NOT have the very much needed “guidance (aka business rules)” you mentioned, just more imponderable opinions!  I too, wish to see the formally accepted “guidance (aka business rules)” on capability modeling and mapping, along with some real industrial strength examples. Abstract examples are good, but they need to be supported with real ones. Where are the seminal documents, articles and research papers from any historical capabilities related archives, which describe how capabilities are designed and developed? Since capability modeling and mapping are usually associated with the Business Architecture, where is the analysis of the approach that was used to determine that capability artifacts meet specific architecture criteria? For that matter, where is the formally documented and accepted capability modeling and mapping, ontology and metamodel? Surely these documents exist, but where are they?  Maybe as in your posting, my questions may get responses, but not answers!

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What is a Business Capability? How Do Business Rules Relate? The Missing Man in Business Capabilities?

There seems to be widespread difference of opinion about what a “business capability” is. When I use the term, however, I simply mean the ability of the business to conduct some form of operational activity. What does the business need for that? It clearly needs people, technologies, data, and processes. And it also needs guidance (aka business rules). Business rules are not just things you document; they are things you run the business by. That intelligence, that intellect, is perhaps the most important business capability of all.

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The Gigantic Logjam

A reader of my blog observed that rulebook management often faces the same organizational challenges as business architecture. So true. Some 30,000-foot thoughts about why it’s so hard so get organizations to adopt them …

1. John Zachman says enterprises (organizations) are the most complicated things ever invented by humans. Now I can think of some things that are pretty darn complicated … say nuclear weapons … but ultimately they reduce to mathematical equations. Businesses don’t. He’s probably right.

2. We’ve been at automating enterprises for how long? Say 50 years? Only one generation. Our generation (well, mine anyway). There might be a few things we haven’t figured out yet?!

3. The power of computers has increased faster than our imagination about how to use them. Add to that the huge inertia faced in changing the current skill base (much less the current legacy portfolios themselves) and it all adds up to … a gigantic logjam.

And that’s where we sit today. Management feels pain, but they can’t diagnose the real sources of the pain. IT knows … well … IT. The economics of the current scheme no longer produce real value except at the edges of operations (e.g., analytics, social media, etc.). And the current infrastructure is no longer scalable or sustainable cost-wise. Logjam. But what happens in a logjam? Pressure builds up and eventually it bursts. So let me repeat my prediction made a few posts back … and add that something equivalent will eventually happen for business architecture.

>> In the long run the whole equation will change. The fundamental problem lies with the fact that business rules still have to be programmed. (Even production rules are programming.) Take programmers out of the business of implementing rules, put business analysts and skilled writers in their place (with appropriate tools), and the current economics of rule management (and IT as a whole) can be improved by at least an order of magnitude. At least!

Entrepreneurs will eventually see the opportunity. (I just hope some of them are in North America.)

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Business Rule Manifesto FAQs Added to BRCommunity.com

I am pleased to announce that a comprehensive set of authoritative FAQs about the Business Rules Manifesto has been added to BRcommunity.com: http://www.brcommunity.com/brm.php The Manifesto is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year – and remains as powerful and as vibrant to today’s business challenges as ever. I will be covering a good many of its insights in my Sunday tutorial, Business Rules: The Why and the What, at this year’s Business Rules Forum conference, part of BBC2012 (Oct. 28 – Nov. 2, Ft. Lauderdale, FL): http://www.buildingbusinesscapability.com/ The FAQs explain in-depth how the Manifesto relates to a great many pressing issues on today’s business agenda, including …
    • Requirements
    • Business Processes
    • Business Analysis
    • Business Agility
    • Enterprise Architecture
    • Zachman Framework  
    • Knowledge Retention
    • Events
    • Enforcement
The new BRCommunity Insider also provides insight into the general positioning and structure of the Manifesto, as well as point-by-point clarification of individual Principles. The Manifesto is just 2-pages and free. It has now been translated into some 15 languages: http://www.businessrulesgroup.org/brmanifesto.htm The Manifesto is a rare thing in our field – a timeless work that seems more and more prescient which each passing year.

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My Three Basic Principles for Compliance

1. It is always important where there’s any chance of ever having to say why. 2. It should always be channel-independent. 3. You should never put yourself in a position of having to reconstruct what rules were applied in making an evaluation or decision after-the-fact. Compliance shouldn’t be the issue that it is – it doesn’t have to be. Rules of record should be a built-in feature of architectures. For all these years, we’ve been thinking ‘data’ is the key to compliance. We should have been thinking rules as applied to data. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Follow-up to my post on Rules of Record: http://goo.gl/dbKaD

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‘Rules of Record’ … Why ‘System of Record’ Isn’t Enough

Business computing today is characterized by a tangled web of interfaces and data movement from system to system, from source to sink. Knowing the official ‘systems of record’ is basic for resolving discrepancies and demonstrating compliance. But that’s merely a start. What your business really needs today is to know the rules of record. A focus on business rules, rule management, and decision management makes that possible. This post explains. First a little background. If every piece of data in the organization had a single, clear home, identifying official versions would be easy. But in today’s world, operational data is extracted, merged, massaged, re-platformed, and reported many times over, often obscuring original sources. Identifying a ‘system of record’ establishes which source is official for each element (or chunk) of data. In other words, it gives you physical traceability back to source.[1] That’s a first and very basic step for compliance. What physical traceability doesn’t do is explain why that source may have a different value from the copy of the data you’re actually seeing. You might call that difference semantic drift (although that term probably dignifies what often is just plain sloppiness about the meaning and use of data). Since you can’t be sure what rules were applied to create the official version, you can’t easily do a delta on what you’re actually seeing. In other words, you have no semantic traceability back to source. From a compliance point of view, knowing the rules for source data is paramount. Of course, if those rules never changed, you might be able to reconstruct them at an acceptable price when and as needed for compliance. But today, change — at an ever faster pace — is the name of the game. Add massive personalization and customization to the mix and you quickly reach an impossible threshold of complexity and expense. The solution is simply never putting yourself in a position of having to reconstruct rules. Rather, you want to manage rules in such way to keep them ‘on the record’ — i.e., to maintain rules of record for each operational business decision your company makes. Impossible? Not at all. That’s exactly what business rules, rule management, and decision management is all about. There is proven technology to support it.[2] All you need to do is change how you look at the problem. References [1] For additional background on ‘system of record’ see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_of_record http://www.yourwindow.to/information-security/gl_systemofrecord.htm [2] For example, Raden and Taylor write, “Logging rules as they execute to create a record of how a decision was made is a common requirement of decision services. They can be managed like a typical logging requirement, except that using business rules makes it easier. Using business rules also makes it possible to use the logged information in both customer-facing and regulatory conversations, because the rules are more user-friendly.” James Taylor and Neil Raden, Smart (Enough) Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions, Prentice-Hall (June 2007), ISBN: 0132347962, p. 358. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The original version of this post appeared as: “‘Rules of Record’ ~ Why ‘System of Record’ Isn’t Enough,” Business Rules Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Jan. 2008) http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2008/b385.html

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Black Swans, Business Rules, and Strategy – Re-Clarified

Let me re-clarify what I am, and am not, saying about business rules and black swans. There’s been some confusion. I did not say that preparing for or responding to black swans is all about business rules. (I’m not that naive!) I did say, however, that business rules “… build robustness to negative [black swans] that occur and being able to exploit positive ones” [Taleb’s words]. My main point is this: If you don’t have ready access to your current business rules (i.e., know what they are in depth), then when a black swan occurs you can’t immediately undertake to respond to negative ones, and exploit positive ones. (See: http://goo.gl/Ny2Cn) A colleague wrote: “For example, Taleb cites 9/11 as an example of a black swan. What business rules would prevent or allow successful response to that?” I make no suggestions about prevention. Hindsight is 20-20. But successful response? You need to quickly review what your current business practices (business rules) are …
  • Permissible carry-ons. Box-cutter knives? Immediately banned. Any other sharp items including silverware for meals, banned.
  • Access to the cockpit. Special barriers (food cart, steward(ess)) put in a blocking position when a pilot exits the cockpit to use the lavatory. Doors locks reinforced.
We learn as we go. Amounts of liquid over a certain threshold, banned. Shoes must be removed at security. Souvenir ‘blizzard’ globes, banned. You want to roll out these new business rules fast(!). If you don’t know what business rules you already have in place, you simply can’t respond as fast you need to. Make no mistake, most businesses today sadly don’t really know what their current business rules are. That’s what I’m saying!

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Black Swans, Business Rules, and Strategy – Continued

I’ve gotten a lot of excellent response to yesterday’s post on black swans. Let me summarize yesterday’s points and continue the line of thought.

a. Business rules cannot be used to help protect against unforeseeable events that have not already happened. b. Business analysts can assess unforeseeable events (black swans) and develop business rules to cater for their potential recurrence.

c. If you don’t have ready access to your current business rules (i.e., know what they are in depth), then when a black swan occurs you can’t immediately undertake point b.

Point c is actually where my emphasis lies. The result is that the organization remains vulnerable for recurrence (and copycat malicious attacks) for a much longer period than necessary (or desirable). How long extra? At least days, more likely weeks, sometimes months. What most organizations don’t realize today is that they don’t actually know what their business rules are. Before they can even begin to rethink business practices in-depth they have to send out ‘scouts’ (business analysts and IT professionals) to discover their current business rules (from people’s heads, source code, procedure manuals, documentation, etc., etc.). When the scouts do find the current business practices (business rules), they have to sort through redundancy, inconsistency, gaps and conflicts. That’s simply no way to run a business! There’s no single-sourcing of business rules, no official, authoritative ‘rulebook’, no structured corporate memory. The result is huge loss of time and energy. The problem is so big it’s hard to see. We simply have to face up to the fact that current methodologies produce a crippled business governance process. And yes, the situation *is* that bad! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ P.S. To single-source business rules and retain corporate memory about them, we recommend a ‘general rulebook system’. See http://www.brcommunity.com/BBSGlossary.pdf (page 30) for quick explanation.

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