Decisions are used by organizations to manage and execute their coordinated, value-adding decision-making and are thereby among an organization’s most important assets. To be able to manage deci-sions and underlying business rules, Decision Management (DM) and Business Rules Management (BRM) are increasingly being applied at organisations. One of the latest developments related to the domain of DM and BRM is the introduction of the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) in September 2015 by the Object Management Group (OMG). The goal of this technical paper is to provide students with a case to practice the specification, verification, validation, deployment, execution, monitoring and governance of business rules in practice.
In this thesis several studies are presented that have targeted decision making about case management plans in probation. In a case management plan probation officers describe the goals and interventions that should help offenders stop reoffending, and the specific measures necessary to reduce acute risks of recidivism and harm. Such a plan is embedded in a judicial framework, a sanction or advice about the sanction in which these interventions and measures should be executed. The topic of this thesis is the use of structured decision support, and the question is if this can improve decision making about case management plans in probation and subsequently improve the effectiveness of offender supervision. In this chapter we first sketch why structured decision making was introduced in the Dutch probation services. Next we describe the instrument for risk and needs assessment as well as the procedure to develop case management plans that are used by the Dutch probation services and that are investigated in this thesis. Then we describe the setting of the studies and the research questions, and we conclude with an overview of this thesis.
The visual representation of Information System (IS) artefacts is an important aspect in the practical application of visual representations. However, important and known visual representation principles are often undervalued, which could lead to decreased effectiveness in using a visual representation. Decision Management (DM) is one field of study in which stakeholders must be able to utilize visual notations to model business decisions and underlying business logic, which are executed by machines, thus are IS artefacts. Although many DM notations currently exist, little research actually evaluates visual representation principles to identify the visual notations most suitable for stakeholders. In this paper, the Physics of Notations framework of Moody is operationalized and utilized to evaluate five different DM visual notations. The results show several points of improvement with regards to these visual notations. Furthermore, the results could show the authors of DM visual notations that well-known visual representation principles need to be adequately taken into account when defining or modifying DM visual notations.
