BUSINESS RULE

Introduction
Business rules are means by which
Strategic management is implemented. The rules tell an
organization what it can do in detailed tactics, while the
strategy tells it how to focus the business at a macro level
to optimize results. Put differently, a strategy provides high-
level direction about what an organization should do.
Business rules can provide the tactical detail about exactly
how a strategy will translate to actions.
Business rules exist for an organization whether or not
they are ever written down, talked about or even part of the
organization’s consciousness. However it is a fairly
common practice for organizations to gather business
rules in at least a very informal manner.
Organizations may choose to proactively describe their
business practices in a database of rules. For example,
they might hire a consultant to come through the
organization to document and consolidate the various
standards and methods currently in practice.
 Introduction:
More commonly, business rules are discovered as part of a
formal requirement gathering process during the initial stages
of a project. In this case the collecting of the business rules
are coincidental. Projects, such as the launching of a new
product, might lead to a new body of business rules for an
organization, i.e. this new product would require the
employees to conceptualize about what the purpose of the
organization is in a new way. This practice of coincidental
business rule gathering is vulnerable to the creation of
inconsistent or even conflicting business rules within different
organizational units, or within the same organizational unit
over time. Business Rules Methodology is the process of
capturing business rules in English, in real-time while
empowering users to manage rules with a few simple steps.
Gathering business rules is also called or
business rule mining. Business analyst or consultant can
extract the rules from Use cases, system code or by
organizing SME workshops/Interviews etc. Software
technologies designed to capture business rules through
analysis of legacy source code or of actual user behavior, can
accelerate the rule gathering process
Categories of Business Rules
• Definitions of business terms
The most basic element of a business rule is the language used to
express it. The very definition of a term is itself a business rule that
describes how people think and talk about things. Thus, defining a
term is establishing a category of business rule. Terms have
traditionally been documented in a Glossary or as entities in a
conceptual model.
• Facts relating terms to each other
The nature or operating structure of an organization can be
described in terms of the facts that relate terms to each other. To
say that a customer can place an order is a business rule. Facts
can be documented as natural language sentences or as
relationships, attributes, and generalization structures in a graphical
model.
• Constraints (also called "action assertions")
Every enterprise constrains behavior in some way, and this is
closely related to constraints on what data may or may not be
updated. To prevent a record from being made is, in many cases, to
prevent an action from taking place.
•Derivations
Business rules (including laws of nature) define how knowledge in
one form may be transformed into other knowledge, possibly in a
different form.
Real world Applications and Obstacles
Despite many software vendors, consultants and research
institutions offering business rules solutions, business rules are
usually only gathered when dictated by law, as the first step in
the automation process or as an ephemeral aid to engineers.
This is mostly due to the overhead and effort required to
maintain this database of rules. This becomes most severe the
more dynamic and fluid the business rules for an organization
are, for example in start-up companies. Another factor reducing
use is the lack of incentive for employees to part with their most
valuable asset to the organization; their knowledge of the
business rules. A third factor is access to viable technology for
maintaining business rules. A classic solution is the
business rules engine. Rules engine products have been gaining
traction in the market place.
Real world Applications and Obstacles
Many tools make a distinction between Business Rules Engines
and Business Rules Management, and somehow need a
translation between the two. Commercially available tools now
also offer the possibility to combine both management and
execution of rules. Combined with an easy to use interface and
a proper notation (see best practices) which can be maintained
by business users, a lot of the disadvantages mentioned above
begin to diminish.

Software packages automate business rules using

business logic. The term business rule is sometimes used
interchangeably with business logic; however the latter
connotes an engineering practice and the former an intrinsic
business practice. There is value in outlining an organization's
business rules regardless of whether this information is used to
automate its operations. One of the pitfalls in trying to fill the
gap between rules management and execution is trying to give
business rules the syntax of logic, and merely describing logical
constructs in a natural language. Translation for engines is
easier, but business users will no longer be able to write down
the rules.
Best practices
Declarative: A business rule is a statement of truth
about an organization. It is an attempt to describe the
operations of an organization, not an attempt to
prescribe how an organization should operate. This
is why business rules are said to be discovered or
observed and not created.
Atomic: A rule is either completely true or completely
false; there are no shades of gray. For example a
rule for an airline that states passengers may
upgrade to first class round-trip tickets if seats are
available and they pay the fare increase does not
imply that this deal is available for just one leg of the
journey.
Distinct, independent constructs: Separate the things
that define your business (the rules) from the
processes (i.e. strategies and tactics). Don't build
complex and cyclical dependencies - simplify and
flatten the constructs.
Expressed in natural language: In order to appeal to
the broadest audience, it is almost always best to
express business rules in a natural language without
the use of a lot of technical jargon.
Best Practices
Graphs: Alternatively, recent tools allow a
graphical notation of business rules, rather than or
in addition to textual notation. This semantic or
model based notations avoid the pitfall of using too
technical or too long textual sentences which
cannot be understood. This also eases the
understanding of complexity in e.g. interacting
rules.
Business, not technology, oriented: For example, a
company's business rules should not be foreign to
a knowledgeable customer.
Business, not technology, owned: Business rules
come from business decisions. These are
independent from implementation decisions.
 Term &
Definition
Strategic Management or institutional management

 is the conduct of drafting, implementing and evaluating

cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to
achieve its long-term objectives. It is the process of
specifying the organization's mission, vision and objectives,
developing policies and plans, often in terms of projects and
programs, which are designed to achieve these objectives,
and then allocating resources to implement the policies and
plans, projects and programs.
 Strategic management is an ongoing process that evaluates
and controls the business and the industries in which the
company is involved; assesses its competitors and sets
goals and strategies to meet all existing and potential
competitors; and then reassesses each strategy annually or
quarterly [i.e. regularly] to determine how it has been
implemented and whether it has succeeded or needs
replacement by a new strategy to meet changed
circumstances, new technology, new competitors, a new
economic environment., or a new social, financial, or political
environment.
Business Analyst

 is used to describe a person who practices the

discipline of business analysis. A business analyst
or "BA" is responsible for analyzing the business
needs of clients to help identify business problems
and propose solutions. Within the
systems development life cycle domain, the
business analyst typically performs a liaison
function between the business side of an
enterprise and the providers of services to the
enterprise. Common alternative titles are business
analyst, systems analyst, and functional analyst,
although some organizations may differentiate
between these titles and corresponding
responsibilities.
Business Rule Engine
is a software system that executes one or more
business rules in a runtime production
environment. The rules might come from legal
regulation ("An employee can be fired for any
reason or no reason but not for an illegal reason"),
company policy ("All customers that spend more
than $100 at one time will receive a 10%
discount"), or other sources.
Business Logic
 is a non-technical term generally used to describe
the functional algorithms that handle
information exchange between a database and a
user interface. It is distinguished from input/output
data validation and product logic.
 models real life business objects (such as
accounts, loans, itineraries, and inventories)
 prescribes how business objects interact with one
another
 enforces the routes and the methods by which
business objects are accessed and updated
Business Rule Mining
 is the process of extracting essential
intellectual business logic in the form of
Business Rules from packaged or
Legacy software applications, recasting
them in natural or formal language, and
storing them in a source rule repository for
further analysis or forward engineering.
The goal is to capture these legacy
business rules in a way that the business
can validate, control and change them over
time.