Practicable: Insight for Expressing Business Rules Well
The standard Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR)[1] offers fundamental insights about how to express business rules well. These common-sense insights can and should directly inform all expression of business rules – and any language that purports to support them.
The first of these insights is the notion of practicable. The descriptive text below is taken directly from SBVR itself.[2]Practicable essentially means all ambiguity has been resolved. As a result, a practicable business rule can be given either to workers to apply ‘manually’, or to IT to implement under some platform, and the results will be exactly the same either way (barring human error or malfeasance).
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Definition: the element of guidance is sufficiently detailed and precise that a person who knows the element of guidance can apply it effectively and consistently in relevant circumstances to know what behavior is acceptable or not, or how something is understood
Dictionary Basis: able to be done or put into practice successfully; able to be used, useful [Oxford Dictionary of English]
Notes:
- The sense intended is: “It’s actually something you can put to use or apply.”
- The behavior, decision, or calculation can be that person’s own.
- Whether or not some element of guidance is practicable is decided with respect to what a person with legitimate need can understand from it.
- For a behavioral rule, this understanding is about the behavior of people and what form compliant behavior takes.
- For a definitional rule, this understanding is about how evaluation of the criteria vested in the rule always produces some certain outcome(s) for a decision or calculation as opposed to others.
- A practicable business rule is also always free of any indefinite reference to people (e.g., “you,” “me”), places (e.g., “here”), and time (e.g., “now”). By that means, if the person is displaced in place and/or time from the author(s) of the business rule, the person can read it and still fully understand it, without (a) assistance from any machine (e.g., to “tell” time), and (b) external clarification.
Tags: ambiguity, expressing business rules, practicable, rule expression, RuleSpeak, SBVR
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.
Wholeness: Insight for Expressing Business Rules Well — Ron Ross on Business Rules
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[…] The standard Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR)[1] offers fundamental insights about how to express business rules well. These common-sense insights can and should directly inform all expression of business rules – and any language that purports to support them. The first of these insights is the notion of practicable, which I discussed in my previous post. See: http://www.brsolutions.com/2015/06/29/practicable-insight-for-expressing-business-rules-well/ […]