The main question in this PhD thesis is: How can Business Rules Management be configured and valued in organizations? A BRM problem space framework is proposed, existing of service systems, as a solution to the BRM problems. In total 94 vendor documents and approximately 32 hours of semi-structured interviews were analyzed. This analysis revealed nine individual service systems, in casu elicitation, design, verification, validation, deployment, execution, monitor, audit, and version. In the second part of this dissertation, BRM is positioned in relation to BPM (Business Process Management) by means of a literature study. An extension study was conducted: a qualitative study on a list of business rules formulated by a consulting organization based on the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission risk framework. (from the summary of the Thesis p. 165)
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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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Dit artikel beschrijft een onderzoek waarbij gekeken is naar mogelijkheden die Business Rules Management-concepten bieden bij het aanbieden van bedrijfsprocessen as a service via een cloud-dienst. BRM helpt bedrijven door het gestructureerd vastleggen van organisatorische keuzes en regels waaraan organisaties moeten voldoen. http://intelligence.agconnect.nl/content/dynamisch-cloudsourcen-van-bedrijfsprocessen
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From the article: Business process management and business rules management both focus on controlling business activities in organizations. Although both management principles have the same focus, they approach manageability and controllability from different perspectives. As more organizations deploy business process management and business rules management, this paper argues that these often separated efforts should be integrated. The goal of this work is to present a step towards this integration. We propose a business rule categorization that is aligned to the business process management lifecycle. In a case study and through a survey the proposed rule categories are validated in terms of mutual exclusivity and completeness. The results indicate the completeness of our main categorization and the categories’ mutual exclusivity. Future research should indicate further refinement by identifying rule subcategories.
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‘Bedrijfsprocessen uit de cloud, business rules als succesfactor’ is een publicatie van het Platform Outsourcing Nederland en is het verslag van een onderzoek van de Hogeschool Utrecht, Lectoraat Extended Enterprise Studies, die tot stand is gekomen met een subsidie van het PON (Platform Outsourcing Nederland).
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From the publishers' website: The goal of this research is to define a method for configuring a collaborative business rules management solution from a value proposition perspective. In an earlier published study (Business rules management solutions: added value by means of business interoperability. In: van Sinderen M, Oude Luttighuis P, Folmer E, Bosms S (eds), International IFIP working conference on enterprise interoperability, vol 144. Springer, Twente, pp 145---157, 2013) we took a business rules perspective on interorganisational collaboration optimization, when we addressed the question what the relation was between types of business interoperability and an organisation's business rules management solution. Different types of collaboration were defined and subsequently combined with eleven identified types of service systems; these service systems together make up the business rules management solution. In this paper we re-address and -present our earlier work, yet based on the findings, we extend it with the construction of a method for determining the configuration of collaborative business rules management solutions. This method is tested by applying it to a case study at an alliance of airlines. Presented results provide a grounded basis from which empirical and practical research on business rules management solutions can be further explored.
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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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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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The implementation of software products is a time-consuming activity and requires specific expertise to be completed successfully. This is especially the case in research fields where there is no or little tool support available, such as Business Rules Management (BRM) and Business Rules Management Solutions (BRMS). Tool support is essential to successfully guide the organizational implementation of a BRMS. Motivated by the diversity of organizational structures and their BRMS implementation contexts, we design a situational-aware framework for the organizational implementation of BRMS. The framework is based on the theory of situational artefact construction. Using situational artefact construction, we study 13 BRMS implementation cases distributed over the financial and public sectors in the Netherlands. Based on the results of the cases analysed we present a framework with three main artefacts that are a stepping-stone towards further research on situational implementation methodology in the BRM field. Leewis, Sam; Smit, Koen; and Zoet, Martijn, "An Explorative Study Into Situational Artefact Construction in Business Rules Management" (2018). BLED 2018 Proceedings. 30. https://aisel.aisnet.org/bled2018/30
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Business decisions and business logic are important organizational assets. As transparency is becoming an increasingly important aspect for organizations, business decisions and underlying business logic, i.e., their business rules, must be implemented, in information systems, in such a way that transparency is guaranteed as much as possible. Based on previous research, in this study, we aim to identify how current design principles for business rules management add value in terms of transparency. To do so, a recently published transparency framework is decomposed into criteria, which are evaluated against the current business rules management principles. This evaluation revealed that eight out of twenty-two design principles do not add value to transparency, which should be taken into account when the goal of an organization is to increase transparency. Future research should focus on how to implement the design principles that add to transparency.
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