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Writing Effective Business Rules

  • 1st Edition - January 27, 2012
  • Latest edition
  • Author: Graham Witt
  • Language: English

Writing Effective Business Rules moves beyond the fundamental dilemma of system design: defining business rules either in natural language, intelligible but often ambiguous… Read more

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Description

Writing Effective Business Rules moves beyond the fundamental dilemma of system design: defining business rules either in natural language, intelligible but often ambiguous, or program code (or rule engine instructions), unambiguous but unintelligible to stakeholders. Designed to meet the needs of business analysts, this book provides an exhaustive analysis of rule types and a set of syntactic templates from which unambiguous natural language rule statements of each type can be generated. A user guide to the SBVR specification, it explains how to develop an appropriate business vocabulary and generate quality rule statements using the appropriate templates and terms from the vocabulary. The resulting rule statements can be reviewed by business stakeholders for relevance and correctness, providing for a high level of confidence in their successful implementation.

Key features

  • A complete set of standard templates for rule statements and their component syntactic elements
  • A rigorous approach to rule statement construction to avoid ambiguity and ensure consistency
  • A clear explanation of the way in which a fact model provides and constrains the rule statement vocabulary
  • A practical reader-friendly user guide to the those parts of the SBVR specification that are relevant to rule authoring

Readership

    Business Analyst, Business Process Modeller, Data Modeller, Business Rules Specialist, Regulation and Compliance Specialist, Legal Specialist

    Table of contents

    Dedication

    Acknowledgments

    Introduction

    Chapter 1. The world of rules

    1.1 What is a business rule?

    1.2 Why rules are important

    1.3 Best practice rule management

    1.4 The nature of the problem

    1.5 The solutions

    1.6 Summary

    Chapter 2. How rules work

    2.1 Operative rules

    2.2 Definitional (structural) rules

    2.3 Normative, prescriptive, and descriptive rules

    2.4 Business processes

    2.5 Rules in user interfaces

    2.6 Rules governing electronic messages

    2.7 Rules ensuring database integrity

    2.8 Human activities other than business processes

    2.9 Summary

    Chapter 3. A brief history of rules

    3.1 Implementing rules

    3.2 Documenting rules

    3.3 Recent developments

    3.4 Summary

    Chapter 4. Types of rules

    4.1 Rules governing the physical world

    4.2 Legislation and regulations

    4.3 Organizational constructs

    4.4 Rules governing the collection and recording of data

    4.5 Taking account of the physical world in data rules

    4.6 Rules governing other business processes

    4.7 Rules governing which parties can perform business processes

    4.8 Rules governing human activities other than business processes

    4.9 A complete taxonomy of rules

    4.10 Summary

    Chapter 5. The building blocks of natural language rule statements

    5.1 Nouns

    5.2 Proper names

    5.3 Verbs

    5.4 Determiners

    5.5 Adjectives

    5.6 Prepositions

    5.7 Conjunctions

    5.8 Pronouns

    5.9 Literals

    5.10 The three uses of ‘that’

    5.11 Summary

    Chapter 6. Fact models

    6.1 Fact models: an overview

    6.2 Terms and names

    6.3 Fact types

    6.4 Building a fact model

    6.5 Using a fact model for other aspects of system specification

    6.6 Summary

    Chapter 7. How to write quality natural language rule statements

    7.1 Typography and punctuation conventions in rule statements

    7.2 Rule statement anatomy

    7.3 Why templates?

    7.4 Rule statement quality

    7.5 Summary

    Chapter 8. An end-to-end rule management methodology

    8.1 Rule discovery

    8.2 Analyzing rules

    8.3 Developing the rule statement vocabulary

    8.4 Documenting rules

    8.5 Rule book quality assurance

    8.6 Rule publication

    8.7 Rule book and fact model maintenance

    8.8 Summary

    Chapter 9. Rule statement templates and subtemplates

    9.1 Using the templates to write rule statements

    9.2 Definitional rules

    9.3 Data rules

    9.4 Activity rules

    9.5 Party rules

    9.6 Summary

    Glossary

    Index

    Review quotes

    "The book takes the study of business rules from theory into practice. This is important as it enables professionals to readily use business rules techniques in the workplace."—Glen Bell, Enterprise Architect and former Senior Manager, Strategy & Architecture, Australian Securities & Investment Commission

    "A valuable resource to the individual (and team) wanting to have an in-depth treatment on the how to's of business rules."—Keri Anderson Healy, Editor, BRCommunity.com

    Product details

    • Edition: 1
    • Latest edition
    • Published: March 15, 2012
    • Language: English

    About the author

    GW

    Graham Witt

    Graham C. Witt is an independent consultant with over 30 years of experience in assisting enterprises to acquire relevant and effective IT solutions. His clients include major banks and other financial institutions; businesses in the insurance, utilities, transport and telecommunications sectors; and a wide variety of government agencies. A former guest lecturer on Database Systems at University of Melbourne, he is a frequent presenter at international data management conferences.
    Affiliations and expertise
    Independent Consultant, Sydney, Australia

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