Classifying Business Rules: I Go By What the Standards Say
In classifying ‘rules’ I go by the standards …
Business Motivation Model (BMM): business policies vs. business rules
- Business rules are always practicable – workers can apply them directly.
- Business policies are not – they must be interpreted first.
- Definitional rules (including decision rules) are about shaping knowledge (and cannot be violated).
- Behavioral rules are about shaping conduct (and can be violated).
- Advices are non-rules; they provide practicable guidance but do not remove any degree of freedom.
- The kinds of rules you see in decision tables are generally definitional. Since they represent only a subset of all definitional rules I call them ‘decision rules’ for convenience.
- Condition-Action or Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules are not business rules at all. They are representations of business rules (for a class of implementation platforms).
- My smart phone can tell me in spoken English where the nearest gas station is. It’s only a matter of time before machines start ‘reading’ regulations, contracts, agreements, business policies, etc. to help people formulate (through dialog) practicable (and implementable) business rules. Can you imagine the productivity benefits?!
- Decision tables are great. Everybody should use them. But they are a lot harder to design well than you might think.
- The DMN standard can move things along significantly … if it is good, and it isn’t overhyped (which it already has been in certain quarters). I’m looking forward to it impatiently. But standardization (in equal parts a political process and a technical process) do take some time!
Tags: advice, behavioral rules, business policies, condition-action rules, decision rules, decision rules vs. behavioral rules, decision tables, definitional rule, DMN, DMN standard, ECA rules, event-condition-action rules, non-rules, practicable, standards
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.