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May 31, 2006
Some business rules principles (after Ron Ross) I was reading Ron Ross' book Principles of the Business Rules Approach (reviewed here) and thought his basic principles deserved both an airing on this blog and some additional "sub principles" when applied to the automation of decisions using business rules technology. The main list is Ron's with my comments and additions below each one.

1. Rules should be written and made explicit

• Rules are not the same as other requirements
• Rules should not be buried in code or SQL
• Rules your operational systems need should be in a Business Rule Management System

Rules should be expressed in plain language

• Rules should be as expressed in language as plain as possible and no plainer (with apologies to Albert Einstein)
• If you can hide complexity to make rules easier to understand, do so

Rules should exist independent of procedures and workflows

• Don't bury your rules in your BPMS, keep them separate

Rules should build on facts and facts should build on concepts as represented by terms

• Write your rules against the objects you are managing already

Rules should guide or influence behavior in desired ways

• Rules that don't do anything are not very helpful
• Rules can take or recommend action

Rules should be motivated by identifiable and important business factors

• Policies, procedures, regulations, strategies
• Remember these should be business rules and so should matter to your business

Rules should be accessible to authorized parties

• Rules need to be managed in a real repository
• A rule repository needs version control, access control, auditing etc

Rules should be single-sourced

• "One rule to rule them all"

Rules should be specified directly by those people who have relevant knowledge

• If you can empower the business users to write the rules do so
• If you can't get the business users to own the rules, make sure they can collaborate on them
• Remember they don't want to write rules, they want to run their business (so make it easy for them)

Rules should be managed

• Putting rules in a BRMS is the first step. Treating them as an asset to be managed, reused and exploited is where the value comes
• Management requires technology and procedures and policies.

Posted by jtaylor in Business Rules |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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