OCEB2BI 04 Business Rules Approach and Shared Business-Wide Vocabulary
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Module 4. Business Rules Approach
and Shared Business-Wide Vocabulary⌘
References⌘
- Ronald Ross, Business Rule Concepts: Getting to the Point of Knowledge, 4th edition - BRS, 2013. [ISBN: 0-941049-14-0]
- Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules (SBVR), v1.2
- Annex E: Overview of the Approach
- Annex F: The Business Rules Approach
Business Rules Approach⌘
by Ronald Ross, Business Rule Concepts: Getting to the Point of Knowledge, 4th edition
Noun Concepts and Business Rules vocabulary⌘
- A term is a noun or noun phrase that workers recognize and use in business communications of all kinds (in agreements, deals, licenses, certifications, warranties, manuals, ...)
- A term carries a particular meaning for the business, which should be unambiguous given a particular context of usage (e.g. customer, order, invoice, employee)
- A term is a word or expression that has a precisely limited meaning in some uses or is peculiar to a science, art, profession, trade, or special subject
- Every term requires a careful definition:
- Customer: one that purchases some commodity or service; especially, one that purchases systematically or frequently
Terms⌘
Term should be:
- Basic (should represent something fundamental to business, cannot be derived)
- Countable (a thing whose instances can be counted - employee instead of staff)
- Non-procedural (term is about knowledge, not about the actions)
The collection of all terms and definitions are the core part of a business vocabulary.
Such terms are crucial for expressing business rules effectively.
Connections Between Noun Concepts and
Wordings⌘
- Connections between noun concepts are expressed using verbs and verb phrases - wordings.
- Wording (verb concept) "customer places order" can be used in BR "A customer has always placed at least one order."
- Wordings extend business vocabulary:
- add standard verbs and verb phrases
- by connecting terms they bring structure to the vocabulary
- At least one term can be involved in connections:
- person smokes (one term)
- customer places order (two terms - a majority of connections)
- person visits city on date (three terms)
Graphical Concept Models⌘
Ronald Ross, Business Rule Concepts: Getting to the Point of Knowledge, Figure 1-1, simple concept model in graphical form
Graphical Concept Models⌘
- “What we can know” about the operational business can always be expressed on the basis of a structured business vocabulary.
- The principal deliverable of concept (fact) modeling is a business vocabulary, not a diagram.
- A concept model is a blueprint for basic business knowledge.
Business Vocabulary Summary⌘
- A structured business vocabulary promotes consistency.
- Each noun concept and verb concept of the operational business is represented in the business vocabulary, one and only one time.
- All structural components should be unified and unique.
Fact Model⌘
by Ronald G. Ross , "What Are Fact Models and Why Do You Need Them (Part 1)," Business Rules Journal, Vol. 1, No. 5 (May 2000)
- A Fact Model structures basic knowledge about business operations from a business perspective.
- It is a crucial starting point for developing more advanced forms of business knowledge, including measures and rules.
- It contains concepts represented by Terms, terms definitions, and logical connections (called "Facts") between core concepts.
- A Fact Model focuses on "knowing" — that is, on how you organize your knowledge about the business process.
- In contrast to a Fact Model, a Data Model focuses on describing the data and its proper format to support system-level requirements development.
Business Rules⌘
- Rules are familiar to us all in real life.
- We play games by rules, we live under a legal system based on rules, we set rules for our children, and so on.
- Thinking about the control aspect of any organized activity in terms of rules is actually very natural (try explaining any game without explaining the rules the game is based).
Business Rule Independence⌘
Rule Independence means separating business rules from processes.
Article 2. Separate From Processes, Not Contained In Them
2.1. Rules are explicit constraints on behavior and/or provide support to behavior.
2.2. Rules are not process and not procedure. They should not be contained in either of these.
2.3. Rules apply across processes and procedures. There should be one cohesive body of rules,
enforced consistently across all relevant areas of business activity.
source: The Business Rules Manifesto
Business Rules Summary⌘
- Business rules put your company on the road to true agility.
- Every business rule costs something.
- The most significant cost of rules is not the direct cost of their implementation and maintenance in software systems.
- The real cost is time to communicate the business rules and to change them.
A Quick 5-Item List of What Are Not
Business Rules⌘
by Ron Ross
- Assigning values to variables.
- Asserting mandatory GUI fields.
- Specifying which data can be viewed by which users.
- Expressing which documents are to be routed to which queues.
- Orchestrating tasks assignments in an execution environment.
Business rules are what you need to run the business, not what you use to set-up systems.
SBVR⌘
by Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules (SBVR), v1.2
Purpose of SBVR⌘
- Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules, OMG Specification
- The SBVR specification is applicable to the domain of business vocabularies and business rules of all kinds of business activities in all kinds of organizations.
- It provides an unambiguous, meaning-centric, multilingual, and semantically rich capability for defining meanings of the language used by people in an industry, profession, discipline, field of study, or organization
- It supports linguistic analysis of text for business vocabularies and business rules
What is a Business Vocabulary?⌘
A business vocabulary contains all the specialized terms, names, and verb concept wordings of concepts that a given organization or community uses in their talking and writing in the course of doing business.
What is a Business Rule?⌘
The SBVR follows a common-sense definition of ‘business rule’:
Business Rule: rule that is under business jurisdiction
- ‘Under business jurisdiction’ means that the business can enact, revise, and discontinue their business rules as they see fit.
- If a rule is not under business jurisdiction in that sense, then it is not a business rule.
- For example, the ‘law’ of gravity is obviously not a business rule. Neither are the ‘rules’ of mathematics.
Two categories of Rules⌘
- Structural Rule (aka Definitional): a business rule can be ill-conceived, misunderstood or misapplied, but it cannot be violated directly.
- Necessity or impossibility
- Associate Trainer is a trainer who signed Associate Trainer Agreement
- Premium Customer is a customer who orders more than $1mln in a calendar year
- Operative Rule (aka Behavioural): A business rule that can be violated directly.
- Obligation or prohibition
- e.g. Every employee must sign employment agreement
Rules, Verb Concepts and Terms⌘
- A verb concept is an relationship between two or more concepts; for example “Rental Car is located at Branch.”
- In SBVR, rules are always constructed by applying necessity or obligation to verb concepts.
- For example, the rule “A Rental must not have more than three Additional Drivers” is based on the verb concept “Rental has Additional Driver.”
- Business Rules Approach: “Business rules build on verb concepts, and verb concepts build on concepts as expressed by terms.”
Business Rule “Mantra”⌘
“Rules are based on facts, and facts are based on terms.”
 |
Terms
Facts
Rules
|
What does 'Practicable' Mean⌘
- All business rules need to be practicable.
- A person who knows about it can decide directly whether it is being followed when that person observes relevant behavior, some relevant outcome from a decision or calculation.
- In other words, a business rule is ready to deploy into business operations.
What does 'Directly Enforceable' Mean⌘
- All operative business rules need to be directly enforceable.
- To be enforceable, an operative business rule has to be defined in such a way that violations can be detected.
- Being directly enforceable is what distinguishes business policies from operative business rules
- Example: ‘trainer must deliver good training’ is not sufficiently precise to be enforced. It is a business policy and needs operative business rules through which it can be enforced:
- The average of results in the trainer section of the TEF must be above 4.0.
- The trainer must provide training course materials for each participant.
Meaning and Representation⌘
The primary subjects of the Meaning and Representation Vocabulary can be described by:
- Expression – things used to communicate (e.g., sounds, text, diagrams, gestures), but apart from their meaning — one expression can have many meanings.
- Representation – the connection between expression and a meaning. Each representation ties one expression to one meaning.
- Meaning – what is meant by a word (a concept) or by a statement (a proposition) – how we think about things.
- Extension – the things to which meanings refer, which can be anything (even expressions, representations, and meanings).
Meaning and Representation Example⌘
- Meaning can be expressed by many different representations.
The Business Rules Manifesto⌘
- http://www.businessrulesgroup.org/brmanifesto.htm The Principles of Rule Independence
Some principles:
- Rules build on facts, and facts build on concepts as expressed by terms.
- Rules are not process and not procedure. They should not be contained in either of these.
- Rules should be expressed declaratively in natural-language sentences for the business audience.
SBVR Structured English⌘
- The most common means of expressing definitions and business rules is through statements, not diagrams.
- Diagrams are helpful for seeing how concepts are related, they are impractical as a primary means of defining vocabularies and expressing business rules.
- Annex A - SBVR Structured English defines an English vocabulary for describing vocabularies and stating rules.
- Annex A describes one way of using English that maps mechanically to SBVR concepts, it uses a small number of English structures and common words to provide a simple and straightforward mapping.
SBVR Structured English - example⌘
Module 4. Questions⌘
- What is term, wording?
- What are two categories of Rules?
- What is Business Rule?
- What is Business Rule “Mantra”?
