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/ The second of these insights is the principle of wholeness. The descriptive text below is taken directly from SBVR itself.[2]Wholeness essentially means each business rule statement can be taken as fully trustworthy even in isolation from all other rules. The principle precludes priority schemes and rules that disable other rules, both of which can act to make any given rule less than fully trustworthy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                          Principle: An element of guidance means only exactly what it says, so it must say everything it means. Explanation: Each element of guidance must be self-contained; that is, no need to appeal to any other element(s) of guidance should ever arise in understanding the full meaning of a given element of guidance. The full impact of an element of guidance for a body of shared guidance, of course, cannot be understood in isolation. For example, an element of guidance might be in conflict with another element of guidance, or act as an authorization in the body of shared guidance. The Wholeness Principle simply means that if a body of shared guidance is deemed free of conflicts, then with respect to guidance, the full meaning of each element of guidance does not require examination of any other element of guidance. In other words, each element of guidance can be taken at face value for whatever it says. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ www.BRSolutions.com

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). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ www.BRSolutions.com

Let me share something we’ve learned from our work on business rules. The world’s leading cause of ambiguity in expressing business rules is missing verbs. Stay with me now. Consider this sample business rule: An order must not be shipped if the outstanding balance exceeds credit authorization. As a first-cut statement, that’s perhaps not bad. The more you read it, however, the more ambiguity you’ll find. Clearly, important ideas are hidden or missing. For example: The outstanding balance of what? …order? …customer? …account? …shipment? The credit authorization of what? …order? …customer? …account? …shipment? The hidden or missing ideas are all verb-related. To eliminate the ambiguity, the relevant verb concepts (called fact types in fact modeling) – must be discerned; then the original business rule restated. Suppose the relevant verb concepts can be worded: customer places order customer has credit authorization customer holds account account has outstanding balance Using RuleSpeak (www.RuleSpeak.com – free) the business rule can now be restated: An order must not be shipped if the outstanding balance of the account held by the customer that placed the order exceeds the credit authorization of the customer. Although the resulting statement is a bit wordier, it is far less likely to be misunderstood, misapplied, or mis-implemented. It is now enterprise-robust. The key insight: Wordings for relevant verb concepts should always appear explicitly in expression of business rules. For that matter, wordings should appear explicitly in any form of business communication you want to be understood correctly – including IT requirements. Note: You probably noticed use of the preposition of in the revised business rule. Stand-in prepositions for verb concepts are considered lazyman’s verbs. (Literally, you can’t make complete sentences with only prepositions!) Yes, you can use a preposition to stand in for a full wording, but do so with caution. As a rule of thumb, prepositions are safe only for two cases: (1) properties – e.g., credit authorization and outstanding balance as above. (2) role names – e.g., owner as in the earlier example, owner of a vehicle. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  This post excerpted from our new book (Oct, 2011) Building Business Solutions: Business Analysis with Business Rules. See:  http://www.brsolutions.com/b_building_business_solutions.php