James Taylor's Decision Management

James Taylor

Decision Management Concept #3 - Decision Services

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A self-contained, callable service with a view of all the conditions and actions that need to be considered to make an operational business decision

Or, more simply

A service that answers a business question for other services

Such a service has some additional characteristics over and above a typical service:

  • Behavior understandable to the business
    After all we are talking about a "business decision" here so the business had better be able to verify exactly what is going on inside
  • Supports rapid iteration without disruption
    Business decisions change all the time so a decision service has to be both flexible and designed for this change
  • Integrates historical data
    Business decisions are increasingly made "by the numbers" with much reference to historical data. Decision Services need a similar ability to use historical data, and trends/insight extrapolated from it.
  • Expects multi-channel use
    While this is largely covered by the standard items it is worth noting as it means that VERY different kinds of applications will use the service - everything from ATMs and SmartPhones to Call Center applications and Bill Printing.
  • Manages exceptions well
    Not only should it respond sensibly when it cannot decide, it should ensure that enough context is returned as to why it could not decide to assist a manual process
  • Must explain its execution
    Many decisions must demonstrate compliance or conformance with policy. Any decision service must be able to log exactly how it decided and that information must be accessible to non-technical users

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A blog about the use of decision management technologies like predictive analytics and business rules to deliver agility, improve business processes and bring intelligent automation to SOA.

James Taylor

James Taylor blogs on decision management for ebizQ, and is an independent consultant on decision management, predictive analytics, business rules, and related topics. View more


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