September 07, 2008   Sign In |  About ebizQ |  Contact Us |  Join ebizQ Gold Club
James Taylor
James Taylor's Decision Management
James is one the leading experts in enterprise decision management, a published author and a principal of Smart (enough) Systems LLC. His blog discusses the use of decision management technologies like predictive analytics and business rules to deliver agility, improve business processes and bring intelligent automation to SOA.

« Top 10 reasons for not automating decisions #1 | Main | BAM, Decision Services and Predictive Analytics. »

July 10, 2006
Brainstorm, BPM, SOA and rules

I attended the Brainstorm BPM/SOA conference a couple of weeks ago and, as I was in the middle of my top 10 list, did not blog about it. Four presentations in particular struck me as interesting. The links below will only work for those of you registered at the BPM Institute but it has lots of good stuff so I recommend it.

The Role of Business Rules in Enterprise Architecture by Larry Goldberg
Larry did a nice job of articulating the value of managing business rules separate from data, function, process etc. Using the Zachman framework and mapping rules into the motivation column he also discusses how production-level business rules are distinct from analysis-level business rules, something that confuses a lot of people. His discussion of how and why to map the rules together and on the value of using a declarative approach to implementing business rules were also worth following.

Enabling Business Process Innovation by Tom Dwyer
Tom Dwyer of the Yankee Group had a nice presentation on enabling business process innovation. I am strongly of the opinion that automating processes without automating decisions properly is a great way to automate brain-dead processes. Any time a process includes complex pricing or eligibility or where the process is designed to support self-service, decision automation will be key to your success when automating the process. Equally you need a way to apply analytics to these processes and the most likely spot for customer or risk analytics, for instance, is going to be in the decision-making steps. In particular moving to the step Tom descries as "Drive Business Agility" will require the kind of change-tolerant components that decision automation technology such as business rules can deliver. Separating decision-making from process-control is also key as the rate of change can be quite different.

Introducing Business Rules into the Enterprise by Brian Stucky
Brian's presentation introduced the wonderful concept of Purple People - not business, not IT but a bit of both (the name comes from the red v blue of American political mapping). He talked at length of the need to use business rules, both at the analysis and technical levels, to bridge the IT/business divide and empower collaboration to deliver agility. This is where the purple people come in and a business rules management system can be a key element to empowering business/IT collaboration and agility. He also had some nice practical suggestions for stewardship and governance.

Moving Towards the Process-Centric World by Simon Hayward
Simon's discussion of the business process platform has an explicit role for managing business rules as services (decision services) that can be orchestrated by business process tools. He also talked about the move to more reactive agility (responding to unexpected threats and opportunities) and to event-based processing. I have previously talked about how such an approach, if it includes decision automation, can be a platform for bringing business intelligence into a business process also.

Lastly I really like the combination of topics at the Brainstorm shows - they bring together BPM, Business Rules, SOA and organizational performance. If this set of things interests you attend the shows and, perhaps, read this article I wrote on Shifting Your CPM Into Action.

Posted by jtaylor in Business Process Management • Business Rules • Decision Technologies |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ebizq.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/464

Comments Post a comment




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)

We ask that you type your code (displayed below) in the text box.This code is an image that cannot be read by a machine. It prevents automated programs from submitting comments.


Code:



Most Recent ebizQ Blog Entries
ADVERTISEMENT
This Work
Accountability:The opinions expressed in this blog are solely representative of the blog's author, and not of ebizQ

Subscribe to our Newsletters
ebizQ Weekly Gold Club Update
Live Webinar Updates
Updates from ebizQ Partners
ebizQ SOA Update
ebizQ BPM Update
ebizQ Security Update
ebizQ BI Update
ebizQ Open Source Software Update
Virtual Show Newsletter
ebizQ Web 2.0 and the Enterprise
Your E-mail Address:
The Future of Application Servers in the Enterprise & IBM WebSphere Application Server V7
Date: Sep 10, 2008
Time: 12:00 PM ET
(16:00 GMT)

REGISTER TODAY!
How to Get a BPM Initiative off the Ground
Date: Sep 16, 2008
Time: 12:00 PM ET
(16:00 GMT)

REGISTER TODAY!
Archived Webinars | Upcoming Webinars

Marketing Solutions | Feedback | About ebizQ | Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy | Site Map

Live Chat