By: Neal McWhorter, Chief Architect, Enterprise Agility
In many organizations today there exists a communication gap between the business community and the IT organization that is so commonplace that its existence is virtually taken for granted. This gap exacts a heavy toll on an organization by preventing business domain experts from knowing how their business is really working.
Both Business Process Management and Business Rules Management software provide significant value in helping organizations to automate processes and become more consistent in their business operations. Each technology also has its own unique benefits -- this white paper describes the roles and benefits of both, and shows how a combined BPM - Business Rules solution can radically improve the agility, consistency, precision and overall performance of your business.
By: Art Moore, Business Rule Architect, Knowledge Partners, Inc.
At its heart, a business rules approach involves delivering the rules of the business back to the business itself, not merely burying them in automated systems. This means separating business rules from process and data as distinct components of business system specifications and managing them as a new kind of business or technical asset.
Whitespace Consulting of Boston, Ma. has released survey results on Business Rules market adoption in the US. The survey discovered many companies in the F500 were performing due-diligence or piloting applications utilizing a business rules approach. Level 0 (Unaware), 1 (Adhoc) or 2 (Repeatable) on the KPI's Business Rule Maturity Model scale. The Financial Services industry, specifically the Insurance sector, appeared to be the farthest along in their experimentation, many institutions with systems already in production.
BrainStorm Group prides itself on providing education and programs on the issues most important to business and IT executives. This is done through a collaborative process with the thought leaders from each community we serve (i.e. BPM, BI, Performance Management, etc.). And while these areas of concentration were once thought to be disparate islands - the lines have blurred.
Separating and managing business rules as a new kind of business asset implies organizational change and investment. To accomplish this, some organizations have adopted rule technology and sophisticated methods along with stewardship programs. Other organizations decide to be less formal. With the current increase in organizations pursuing the Business Rules Approach (BR Approach), two important questions surface early:
- What kinds of projects are most appropriate for a BR Approach?
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The use of Business Rule Management Systems is growing at a rapid rate. The Gartner Group suggests, “the number of business applications that employ variable business rules will increase to between 30 and 35 percent by the year 2007.” As these applications proliferate, it will be essential to provide governance to support intelligent and consistent use of the technology.
Discussion of a BR Center of Excellence will include topics such as:
What is such a group?Why and when do you need one?What are the risks of not having one?How do you staff and manage one?What is their mission?
How do you organize and operate one?
Time: 3:45 September-22-2005
Entrenched business processes are enabled by entrenched application systems. As a result, efforts to change or retool business processes can be streamlined through the factual analysis of the data and rules embedded in these systems. This session will explain how to capture and analyze business logic to support system and business process retooling initiatives. The discussion includes data usage and business logic extraction from existing systems and mapping the results to top-down, logical designs.
Time: 3:00 September-22-2005
This case study relates how NYSLRS progressed from Rules Maturity Model Level 0 to Level 2 in under a year by using a low cost/low risk methodology that allows for the incremental implemented of business rules in legacy systems. This approach, User-defined Function Approach, allows a company to convert legacy systems into modern agile systems or to investigate the use business rules before selecting a Business Rule Processing solution. IBM has endorsed UDFA as a best practice for business rule implementation.