Don't just move your chair - James Taylor's Decision Management

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September 05, 2007
Don't just move your chair

I saw this post over on Steve Jones' blog - Want to get closer to your business? Then move your chair. While I agree with his basic premise I think he stops short of what it really takes. Clearly one of the requirements for effective collaboration is a willingness to work on the same problem at the same time (and ideally in the same location). However, if the IT people want to talk about code and the business people want to talk about policies, regulations or pricing strategies, this is going to be a problem. The business people don't read code, and mostly don't want to. The IT people might want to understand the business, but it's not realistic to have them know enough to keep up. What you need is an approach, and some technology, that let's both "sides" talk about the same thing. The technology in question is a business rules management system and the approach is one of automating and managing decisions, using business rules, separate from other aspects of the system.

This approach, and this technology, allows the business and IT to work collaboratively (even on the same rules if they put their chairs close). It also addresses one of the problem with programmers and helps the IT people embrace the changeable, unstable nature of business (as discussed in my business rules café article). It takes some work to engage the business in this process (there are some secrets of business user rule maintenance) but it is worth it. Smarter systems, increased agility, better collaboration. All yours for the taking.

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