James Taylor's Decision Management

I saw this post by Eileen Yu over on ZDNet Asia - Seven habits of effective developers - in which she discusses an interview with Lee Chuk Munn, a staff engineer at Sun Microsystems Asia-Pacific. I liked the list overall but a couple of his points seemed particularly noteworthy:

2. Use appropriate tools
It seems to me that business logic, how business decisions are made, is inherently declarative rather than procedural. Most business people can tell you the rules they apply to make a decision. An appropriate tool for this kind of problem would allow specification of logic in a declarative way and would engage the business in developing it collaboratively. This means business rules and a Business Rules Management System. The article notes that developers are prone to the "Golden Hammer" rule in that they use the tools they know even when they might not be the most useful. Learn about business rules - they may not be another programming language but they are a better way to do certain things.

3. Strive for simplicity
He argues that code should be easy to understand, easy to explain, easy to maintain and easy to document. Interestingly business rules are all of these things.

4. Keep your code clear
Rules are clearer because they are atomic, declarative and more verbose than code. Logic expressed in rules can and generally will be much clearer than logic expressed in code.

So, programmers, don't forget business rules when considering the tools for a job that repays easy to read, easy to maintain and clear "code". Of course one of the problem with programmers is that they want to code business logic. Just because they want to, though, does not mean they should.

Technorati Tags: agility, BRMS, business rules, collaboration, rule management