In a recent blog post I called attention to the fact that there’s a major collision of terminology with respect to the term decision as used by different communities. See: http://www.brsolutions.com/2014/07/06/a-note-to-business-analysts-about-%e2%80%98decision%e2%80%99/ My basic observation was that both communities are correct in their own context – but since the contexts intersect the result is a significant potential for confusion.

• Business Analyst Community. Decision is often used in talking about business analysts’ own work – i.e., what methods to use, go/no-go on change, tool selection, choice of elicitation approach, etc. Its usage also seems to cover the sense of “management decision” – e.g., what course should project work take.
• General Business Community. Decision always refers to a determination in business activity – e.g., should this applicant be given a mortgage, what should be charged for shipping an order, etc. This is the focus of decision in the business rules / decision engineering community.

Let me make some additional observations. A first question one should ask to clarify decision is what is the time horizon? Is it strategic or operational? A second question one should ask is what does decision actually refer to when used by each community for a given time horizon? Table. What Decision Refers to Based on Community and Time Horizon

Time Horizon of Decision	General Business Community	Business Analysis Community
strategic	strategic business decision	strategic project decision or change initiative decision or option analysis
operational	operational business decision	—

  In contrast to operational decisions, strategic decisions are always longer in time horizon, and generally made only once (which isn’t to say they can’t be revisited sometimes). This point is true for both communities. The distinguishing characteristics of an operational business decision is that it:

• Is highly repetitive (100s, 1000s, or more per day, hour, etc.).
• Can be encoded as practicable business rules.

Note: My analysis doesn’t address operational decisions for the Business Analysis Community (the cell show with dashes). That’s not because decision isn’t applicable in that context, but rather simply because it’s outside the scope of the present discussion. I recently saw the following draft definition of decision, which illustrates the problem of mixed meanings quite clearly.

An activity to answer a question or select an option from a known or knowable set of possible options. Typically defined in terms of business rules and made in response to events or at defined points in a business process.

• The first part of the definition is reasonable for decision in any usage. It applies to both communities and to any time horizon.
• The second part of the definition pertains only to the meaning of operational business decision. Strategic decisions, whether for the General Business Community or for the Business Analysis Community, are generally not based on specific business rules and are not made in response to events or at defined points in a business process. Strategic decisions are simply different in kind from operational business decisions.

The focus of a strategic decision is also quite different for each of the two communities.

• General Business Community: The focus is on conducting future business in a certain way.
• Business Analysis Community. The focus is on conducting a proposed initiative in a certain way to change the business itself.

Bottom Line: For clarity, I would always qualify decision to indicate which kind is meant. We certainly don’t need any more confusion in business engineering than already exists! www.BRSolutions.com

Perhaps the following point about the term decision is already clear to all, but at the risk of stating the obvious, I’ll make it anyway. There’s a major collision of terminology with respect to decision as used by different communities.    

• In the business analyst community, decision is often used in talking about business analysts’ own work – i.e., what methods to use, go/no-go on change, tool selection, choice of elicitation approach, etc. Its usage also seems to cover the sense of “management decision” – e.g., what course should project work take.
• In the larger business community, decision always refers to a determination in business activity – e.g., should this applicant be given a mortgage, what should be charged for shipping an order, etc. This is the focus of decision in the business rules / decision engineering community.

In the context of their own communities both usages are correct. Unfortunately, the collision often results in confusion about the appropriate focus – and about which methods to use – for both audiences. In situations such as this, the best practice is to define the concept in question for each community. Terms considered to be obvious usually aren’t. It’s not clear to me that this has been done explicitly in the business analyst community. Another best practice is to qualify the term every time it’s used. So we always say operational business decision when talking about the business context, not just decision. That also distinguishes the concept we mean from other potential sources of confusion – e.g., strategic business decisions and system-level decisions or IT decisions. I believe what the business analyst community means by decision is strategic project decision or strategic change decision. But I can’t really be sure since as I say the term doesn’t seem to have been defined. www.BRSolutions.com

Let me mention two important things happening soon and special discounts for them – Both discounts good only through **Friday, September 30**   1. ANNOUNCING OUR NEW BOOK … Coming in October! BUILDING BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: BUSINESS ANALYSIS WITH BUSINESS RULES … an IIBA Sponsored Handbook (304pp) … It’s all about taking Business Analysis to the next level of capability.  http://www.brsolutions.com/bbs >> Receive 25% off the book’s list price of $39.95 if you pre-order now. Use discount code **BBS1001**.  2. BUILDING BUSINESS CAPABILITIES CONFERENCE (BBC 2011) … Oct. 31 – Nov. 3, Ft. Lauderdale, FL  http://www.buildingbusinesscapability.com/  The must-attend conference of the year covering all things ‘business’.  Four conferences in one for a total of 9 tracks … on pace this year to be a sell-out!  >> Receive a 15% discount on registration. Use discount code **RRBBCFL**.  * Business Analysis Forum, the Official Conference of the IIBA. http://www.buildingbusinesscapability.com/baf/ * 14^th annual Business Rules Forum Conference. http://www.businessrulesforum.com/ * The 1^st annual Business Architecture Summit. http://www.buildingbusinesscapability.com/bas/ * The Business Process Forum. http://www.businessprocessforum.org/