James Taylor's Decision Management

I recently saw this interesting post on the EDS Next Big Thing Blog - Effective Re-Use - Using SOA to Preserve and modernize your IT Investment. It made me think about the reuse potential of business rules. I thought I would start by editing their graphic to show where I think business rules fits:

As you can see I think business rules offer the potential for both project-level and enterprise-level reuse. Clearly rules can represent core business decisions, this is their most valuable use, and as such belong in an enterprise governance framework for reuse at a business level. They can also offer the potential for project-level productivity gains by allowing standard or common rules to be reused more tactically.

I believe that business rules offer a unique combination of reuse and business/IT collaboration that enalbes them both to make IT more effective at a project level and the business more effective at an enterprise level.