This document discusses business rules and decision tables. It provides examples of how decision tables can be used to represent business rules involving multiple criteria. The document advocates that decision tables are a natural format for representing real-world business rules that involve three or more multi-value criteria. It also discusses key aspects of business rules like terms, facts, and categories and provides an example of a library fact model and business rules.

1. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 3 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
by Ronald G. Ross
Co-Founder & Principal, Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Executive Editor, Business Rules Journal, www.BRCommunity.com
Chair, Business Rules Forum Conference, Oct. 17-21, Washington DC
References:
Business Rule Concepts (3rd Ed),
Ronald G. Ross, 2009, BRSolutions.com
Principles of the Business Rule Approach
Ronald G. Ross, Addison-Wesley, 2003
What You Need to Know about
Decisioning with Business Rules
Process Days Conference – July 29, 2010

2. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 4 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Mr. Ross is recognized internationally as the “father of business rules.” He has served as Co-Chair of the annual
Business Rules Forum Conference since 1997. He was a charter member of the Business Rules Group (BRG) in
the 1980s, and an editor of the two landmark BRG papers, “The Business Motivation Model: Business Governance
in a Volatile World” (2000, revised 2005, 2007) and the “Business Rules Manifesto” (2003). He is also active in
OMG standards development for business rules and business models, including SBVR.
Mr. Ross (RonRoss.info) is the author of eight professional books. His newest are: Business Rule Concepts (2009),
a third edition of his popular, easy-to-read handbook, and Principles of the Business Rule Approach, Addison-
Wesley (2003). An earlier work, The Business Rule Book (1994, 1997), was the seminal work in the field. Mr. Ross
received his M.S. in information science from Illinois Institute of Technology, and his B.A. from Rice U.
Ronald G. Ross is Co-Founder and Principal of Business Rule Solutions, LLC
(BRSolutions.com). BRS provides workshops, consulting, publications, and
methodology supporting business analysis, business rules, business vocabulary,
decisioning, and rule management. His popular public seminars, the first on
business rules (starting 1996) and the longest-running in the industry, are given
through AttainingEdge in North America and IRM-UK in Europe.
Mr. Ross co-develops ProteusR
, BRS’s landmark methodology, featuring
numerous innovative techniques including the popular RuleSpeakR
(free on
RuleSpeak.com, now also in Spanish, German and Dutch). These are the latest
offerings in a 35-year career that has consistently featured creative, business-
driven solutions.
Mr. Ross is also Executive Editor and regular columnist of BRCommunity.com
and its flagship on-line publication, Business Rules Journal. Sponsored by
BRS, BRCommunity.com is a non-commercial vertical community for
professionals working in the field. Mr. Ross was formerly Editor of the Data
Base Newsletter from 1977 to 1998.
About Ronald G. Ross

3. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 5 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
One Organization’s Achievement
Financial Services – Credit Card Fraud Detection
Business Set-Up
Suspicious transactions kicked out to fraud specialists for manual inspection.
Fraud specialists are an expensive and largely non-scalable resource.
Scenario
The bad guys pick up and move shop from Idaho to Manhattan.
Transactions deemed suspicious by zip code yield a 10x increase in volume.
Additional selection criteria (e.g., location of store, type of store, frequency of
use, size of transaction, etc.) introduced to keep the volume of kick-outs
relatively constant.
Achievement
Before rules engine … elapsed time: 30-60 days.
After rules engine … elapsed time: 3-6 days.
What is Possible?

4. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 6 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Software
Release
Cycle
Separating the
Business Rule vs.
Software Release
Life Cycles
Business Workers
Business
Rule
Life Cycle
IT
What is Necessary!

5. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 7 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
One Organization’s Achievement
Home Mortgage Department – Major U.S. Bank
Automated Decisioning Department
One of the most mature in the world.
“It's not an accident that the bank is in good standing in this financial crisis.”
Achievement
Software released about twice a year by IT.
Rules changed every 1-3 weeks by business analysts.
What is Possible?

6. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 8 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Governing
Rules
Practicable
Rules
Automated
Rules
Managing the
Business
Operating the
Business
Running the
Systems
Business Traceability = Requirements Traceability
Traceability!
Accountability!
Transparency!
What is Necessary!

7. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 9 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Business Workers
What is Necessary!
Reference:
Business Rule Concepts (3rd Ed.), Chapter 3
General
Rulebook
System (GRBS)
Rulebook Management: the skills,
techniques and processes needed to
express, analyze, trace, retain, and
manage the decision logic used in
day-to-day business operations
Focus: Manage decision logic as
a business problem rather than a
technical problem.
Goals: Ensure that ...
Basic business know-how is always
accessible to those duly authorized.
Business policies, regulations, and
contractual obligations are interpreted
in a faithful, repeatable and transparent
fashion.

8. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 10 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Software
Release
Cycle
Testing
Business Workers
Business
Rule
Life Cycle
IT
What is Possible?
“We do enough analysis of new business
rules, that it is literally not worth the cost
of going through traditional IT testing.”

9. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 11 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
$
$
$
$
When is the best time to find you
have anomalies in your rules?
Business Leads
Logic Architects
Tech. Engineers
Technicians
Workers
Business Model
(CIM)
Computable
Model (PIM)
Platform-Spec.
Model (PSM)
“Code”
Functioning
Bus. Capacity
What is Necessary!

10. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 12 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Rule Anomalies …
An order over $1,000 must not be accepted on credit without a credit check.
An order over $1,000 may be accepted on credit only with a credit check.
Linguistic Equivalences
Modal Equivalences
Logical Equivalences
Subsumations
Conflicts
A permanent employee must receive a salary.
An employee who is permanent must receive a salary.
A high-risk customer must not place a rush order.
A rush order must not be placed by a high-risk customer.
A rush order must have a destination.
An order must have a destination.
A shipment must include more than 1 order.
An out-of-state shipment may include only 1 order.
What is Possible?

11. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 13 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Expression
Example
Discourse-Dependent Rule:
Please mute your phone.
Discourse-Independent Rule:
A webinar attendee must mute
their phone while not speaking.
A best practice for expressing rules …
Business rules must be understandable ‘out of context’.
Meaning
What is Necessary!
Say fully what you
mean …
… and mean fully
what you say.

12. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 14 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Origin:
Developed by Business Rule Solutions, LLC (BRS) starting in 1996.
Applied in hundreds of projects since that time.
Standardization:
One of three reference notations used in the creation of SBVR.
Fully consistent with that standard.
RuleSpeak®
… for business-friendly business rules in structured natural language
… in English (2.0), Dutch, Spanish & German … released April, 2009
… free on www.RuleSpeak.com
What is Possible?

13. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 15 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Business Rules … Criteria for making
minute-to-minute business decisions
Human Behavior
“… criteria for conduct or action.”
Business rule:
A gold customer must be allowed
access to the warehouse.
Is this a gold
customer or
not? … Yes!
Classifications and Computations
“… criteria for shaping concepts.”
Business rule:
A customer is always considered a
gold customer if the customer places
more than 12 orders
during a calendar year.
Let this customer
in or not?
… Yes!
What is Necessary!

14. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 16 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Design Decisions = Business Decisions
Software Vendor:
“… Depends on your definition of
‘business rule’...
… If I change a definitional rule like
‘customers only have 1 address’to
‘customers can have multiple
addresses’…
… then that can have deep
consequences on [automated]
systems.”
What is Necessary!

15. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 17 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Claimant
Take Claim
Information
Verify Basic
Claim
Information
Adjudicate
Claim
makes claim
if valid claim
if claim
denied
if fraud suspected
if claim accepted
if policy
number
missing
if policy
number
invalid
if policy
expired
If claimant
name invalid
If no
location
given
If …
How many “ifs”?!?
How many rules?!?
no
no
no
no
no
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Never embed
diamonds (or series
of diamonds!) in your
business process
models.
These diamonds
always represent
business rules …
which are best defined
independently.
Embedding diamonds
will hopelessly
complicate your
model.
What is Necessary!
“Anytime you stick your
business rules in your process,
you’re dead.”
Roger T. Burlton

16. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 18 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Rule: A claim can be considered valid
only if it has all the following:
An active policy.
A claimant.
An incident.
Decision-making may involve a very large
number of business rules!
Verify Basic
Claim
Information
Adjudicate
Claim
if valid claim
A best practice for business process models …
What is Possible?
Business Rules …
Govern the interpretation of a conditional.
Provide criteria for branch points in the business
process model.

17. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 19 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
What is Possible?
Claimant
Claimant
ClaimantTake Claim
Information
Verify Basic
Claim
Information
Notify
Claimant
Request
Additional
Information
Notify
Claimant
Adjudicate
Claim
Claimant
Make
Payment
Claims
Clerk
Adjudicator
Claims
Payment
System
makes claim
if invalid
claim
if insufficient
information
if response
if valid claim if no
response
if claim
denied
Upon
suspicion
of fraud
if fraud suspected
if claim approved
if no fraud detected
Process Claims
“… the tasks required
for an enterprise to
satisfy a planned
response to a business
event …
… from beginning to
end ...
…with a focus
on the roles of actors,
rather than the actors’
day-to-day job”
Janey Conkey Frazier
Incremental
Development!

18. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 20 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
“The staff at GE observed that flowcharts, formulas, and narratives were
inadequate when working with complex logic.”
Reported in Communications of the ACM,
Vol 4, No 11 (November, 1961), pp. 516-520.
“The … design and implementation practices of software engineering
have a weak point: the design of the internal logic of the module or segment.
Such … designs should be disciplined, easily understood, and checkable.”
Decision Tables in Software Engineering, by Richard B. Hurley,
Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, 1983, p 1.
What is Necessary!

19. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 21 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Capture
Analyze
Deploy
Execute
Price
Offering
“Making information more
readily available is important,
but making better decisions
based on information is what
pays the bills.”
Smart (Enough) Systems
by James Taylor & Neil Raden
Prentice-Hall, 2007, p. 337
What is Possible?

20. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 22 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Capture
Analyze
Deploy
Execute
Price
Offering
What is Necessary!

21. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 23 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Capture
Analyze
Deploy
Execute
Price
Offering
General
Rulebook
System
(GRBS)
Solutions!
Faster deployment
… Decision Cycle Time
Rule engines
… Business Rules
What is Possible?

22. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 24 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA)
“pricing”
Business Rules
Repository
Decision
Service
The business rules are now...
Traceable
Re-usable
Improvable...
Auditable...
What is Possible?

23. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 25 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) ??
“pricing”
Business Rules
Repository
Decision
Service
What is Necessary!
“Business events are a more natural
way for business people to express
requirements than 'services’ …
SOA is a flawed paradigm. The focus
should be on 'what event is happening',
rather than 'what service do I need'.”
Mike Gualtieri
Forrester

24. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 26 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Rule: The applicable sales tax rate must be the percent in
County-by-Year Sales Tax Table for a given year and county.
County-by-Year Sales Tax Table County
Year
Harkin Lopes Qwan Quail
2008 6.95 8.2 7.35 4.0
2009 6.73 8.3 9.0 4.5
2010 6.15 8.4 9.0 5.0
2011 6.15 8.3 9.0 5.5
2012 6.15 8.4 6.75 6.0
2013 6.15 8.2 6.75 6.75
2014 5.75 8.2 6.75 7.0
2015 5.95 8.4 7.5 7.25
What is Possible?
About Decision Tables

25. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 27 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
About Decision Tables
Human Behavior
“… criteria for conduct or action.”
Business rule:
A gold customer must be allowed
access to the warehouse.
Is this a gold
customer or
not? … Yes!
Classifications and Computations
“… criteria for shaping concepts.”
Business rule:
A customer is always considered a
gold customer if the customer places
more than 12 orders
during a calendar year.
Let this customer
in or not?
… Yes!
What is Necessary!

26. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 28 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Three
Multi-Value
Criteria
One Table
Observation:
This is the natural format for
decision tables in the real world.
What is Necessary!

27. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 29 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Rule: A library card may be used to check-out a book
only if the book is owned by a library for
which the card is authorized.
Library Fact Model
Business Rules
encompass ...
Terms
typically 100s
Facts
typically 10X Terms
Rules
typically 10X Facts
library
card
assessment
person
borrower
book
librarian
library
is used to check-out
works
for
makes
owns
is made for
borrower type
holds
is charged
against
is authorized for
organization
fee amount
is owned
by
Legend
= Term (+ Definition)
= Fact
= Category
What is Possible?

28. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 30 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
An ASSESSMENT is a specific monetary charge against a Library Card for abuse
of books or borrowing privileges.
A BOOK is any document, publication or work in any media that is held by or
available through a Library.
A BORROWER is a Person or Organization of interest to a Library that can
potentially borrow Books.
A BORROWER TYPE is the category of a Borrower -- i.e., Person or Organization.
A FEE AMOUNT is the total amount of an Assessment.
A LIBRARIAN is a certified professional who can work in a Library in an official
capacity.
A LIBRARY is a repository of Books and/or a lender of Books to Borrowers.
A LIBRARY CARD is an agreement between a Borrower and a Library indicating
that the parties agree to abide by the Library’s book-lending rules.
An ORGANIZATION is legal entity that can act independently of particular persons.
A PERSON is an individual who acts in his own behalf.
Defining Terms:
The Concepts Catalog (Glossary)
What is Possible?

29. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 31 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Case from the Electrical Transmission Industry
… “Load”
Business Meaning
1. A network component that uses
energy
2. The operating level of a network
component that uses energy
3. A party that owns a network
component that uses energy
4. A state of a network component
5. A part of the output of a
generating resource
6. Constancy (“firmness”) of
energy usage
7. Demand for energy
… Context of Business Usage
… Physical facilities that use
energy
…Amounts of energy that physical
facilities use
… Organizations participating in
the energy marketplace
… Resources that can sometimes
use energy (“net”)
… Measurements of energy
production
… Projections of energy production
and usage
… Aggregate network estimates
What is Necessary!
“Our people think they are talking to
each other using the same language …
but they often aren’t!”
One Executive’s Lament

30. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 32 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Article 3. Deliberate
Knowledge, Not A
By-Product
3.1. Rules build on facts, and facts build on
concepts as expressed by terms.
Reference: Business Rule Concepts,
(3rd Ed.), Chapter 1 and Part II.
Business logic is built in
building-block fashion.
Business rules express
basic business knowledge.
Business Rules Manifesto
The Principles of Rule Independence
by Business Rules Group, 2003
www.BusinessRulesGroup.org
What is Necessary!

31. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 33 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
About Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Ronald G. Ross Gladys S.W. Lam
Over 14 Years Exclusively in Business Rules
Co-Founders More Ways to Find Out More …
Oct. 17-21, 2010
Washington, DC
Public Seminars …
Ottawa – Sept. 21-24
Public Seminar …
London – Nov. 18-19

32. Business Rule Solutions, LLC
The Business Rule Technique Company 34 Copyright, BRS. All rights reserved.
Thank You!
~~
Decisioning with Business Rules: Summary