During the timespan of the implementation of a system, the why and what against the actual state of the system can change. This difference is referred to as the design problem. Currently, no design problems are identified in Business Rules Management (BRM) and Business Rules Management System (BRMS) literature. To solve problems with a BRMS implementation it is important that the problems solved by this implementation are known, which is not the case. A case study approach is utilized containing two phases of data collection. Phase one consisted of multiple expert interviews focused on creating a set of design problems utilizing existing literature on BRMS design problems. Then, in phase two, the set of design problems were proposed to a selection of thirteen organizations, which indicated if the design problems occurred in a BRMS implementation. This resulted in a set of 24 design problems. The identification of design problems contributes to future research in evaluating BRMS’s. Furthermore, the identification of design problems is a contribution towards situational artifact construction in the field of BRM.
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Evaluating an (implemented) Business Rules Management Solution (BRMS) is not a frequently conducted process within organizations. A tool is needed, which supports this process and supports future BRMS implementations. A literature study is conducted on the relevant building blocks of a BRMS. The results are validated through qualitative expert interviews. This resulted in the BRMS analysis tool that can be utilized to structure the analysis for one or multiple BRMS implementations. Next, the BRMS analysis tool is applied at 13 organizations that implemented a BRMS. The BRMS analysis tool provides the BRMS implementation stakeholders with a tool that structures, in a systematic and controlled way, that is capable to analyze a BRMS implementation for one or multiple organizations. This research contributes to structured and managed information which is important for better business and IT alignment. Furthermore, structured and managed information contributes towards the easier creation of a business case.
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From the article: Business rules management is a mean by which an organization realizes controllability of business activities to fulfill goals. Currently the focus of controllability is mainly on effectiveness, efficiency and output quality. Little attention is paid to risk, stakeholder concerns and high level goals. The purpose of this work is to present a viewpoint relating business rules management with concepts of risks, stakeholder, concerns and goals. The viewpoint is presented by means of a meta-model existing out of six concepts: stakeholder, concern, goal, business rule, requirements and implementation mechanism. In a case study the proposed view is validated in terms of completeness, usability and accuracy. Results illustrate the completeness, usability and a high degree of accuracy of our defined view. Future research is suggested on the development of a modeling language to improve the communicational value and ease of use of the meta-model.
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Planning of transport through inland shipping is complex, highly dynamic and very specific. Existing software support is focusing on road transport planning and/or is merely a visual representation of shipments to be manually assigned to particular vessels. As a result inland shipment planning is time-consuming and highly relies on the personal skills of the planner. In this paper we present a business rules based model that aims to further support inland shipping organizations in their shipment planning by identifying the characteristics and constraints that are of interest and the related explicated business rules. The model is derived from transport-related literature, explorative expert interviews and transport management software vendors. The usability and applicability of the model is subsequently successfully empirically tested using identified performance measures through a case study at a major European inland shipping broker
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Author supplied Business rules play a critical role in an organization’s daily activities. With the increased use of business rules (solutions) the interest in modelling guidelines that address the manageability of business rules has increased as well. However, current research on modelling guidelines is mainly based on a theoretical view of modifications that can occur to a business rule set. Research on actual modifications that occur in practice is limited. The goal of this study is to identify modifications that can occur to a business rule set and underlying business rules. To accomplish this goal we conducted a grounded theory study on 229 rules set, as applied from March 2006 till June 2014, by the National Health Service. In total 3495 modifications have been analysed from which we defined eleven modification categories that can occur to a business rule set. The classification provides a framework for the analysis and design of business rules management architectures.
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Business rule models are widely applied, standalone and embedded in smart objects. They have become segregated from information technology and they are now a valuable asset in their own right. As more business rule models are becoming assets, business models to monetize these assets are designed. The goal of this work is to present a step towards business model classification for organizations for which its value position is characterized by business rule models. Based on a survey we propose a business model categorization that is aligned to different types of assets and business model archetypes. The results show five main categories of business models: The value adding business rule model, the ‘create me a business rule model’ business model, the KAAS business model, the bait and hook business model and the market place business model.
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Business rules play a critical role during decision making when executing business processes. Existing modelling techniques for business rules offer modellers guidelines on how to create models that are consistent, complete and syntactically correct. However, modelling guidelines that address manageability in terms of anomalies such as insertion, update and deletion are not widely available. This paper presents a normalisation procedure that provides guidelines for managing and organising business rules. The procedure is evaluated by means of an experiment based on existing case study material. Results show that the procedure is useful for minimising insertion and deletion anomalies.
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From the article: Abstract Since more and more business rules management solutions are utilized, organizations search for guidance to design such solutions. Principles are often applied to guide the design of information systems in general. Scientific research on principles for business rules management is limited. The purpose of this paper is to specify, classify, and validate design principles that can be applied to guide the design of a business rules management solution. We conducted a three round focus group and three round Delphi Study, which led to the identification of 22 principles. These 22 principles can be clustered into four categories: 1) deep structure principles, 2) physical structure principles, 3) surface structure principles, and 4) organizational structure principles. Our results provide a framework for the design and analysis of business rules management solutions.
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Since an increasing amount of business decision/logic management solutions are utilized, organizations search for guidance to design such solutions. An important aspect of such a solution is the ability to guard the quality of the specified or modified business decisions and underlying business logic to ensure logical soundness. This particular capability is referred to as verification. As an increasing amount of organizations adopt the new Decision Management and Notation (DMN) standard, introduced in September 2015, it is essential that organizations are able to guard the logical soundness of their business decisions and business logic with the help of certain verification capabilities. However, the current knowledge base regarding verification as a capability is not yet researched in relation to the new DMN standard. In this paper, we re-address and - present our earlier work on the identification of 28 verification capabilities applied by the Dutch government [1]. Yet, we extended the previous research with more detailed descriptions of the related literature, findings, and results, which provide a grounded basis from which further, empirical, research on verification capabilities with regards to business decisions and business logic can be explored.
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From the article: With increasing investments in business rules management (BRM), organizations are searching for ways to value and benchmark their processes to elicitate, design, accept, deploy and execute business rules. To realize valuation and benchmarking of previously mentioned processes, organizations must be aware that performance measurement is essential, and of equal importance, which performance indicators to apply to the performance measurement processes. However, scientific research on BRM, in general, is limited and research that focuses on BRM in combination with performance indicators is nascent. The purpose of this paper is to define performance indicators for previously mentioned BRM processes. We conducted a three round focus group and three round Delphi Study which led to the identification of 14 performance indicators. Presented results provide a grounded basis from which further, empirical, research on performance indicators for BRM can be explored.
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