The Business rules approach is a technique for formalizing an enterprises critical business rule in a way the business persons (analysts and experts) understand. This technique helps to find, describe, manage, test and at least automate business rules. In a real life scenario this approach is implemented in several process steps, also called as business rules lifecycle.

It is important to understand, results of the business rules optimization process are input into the discovery process in the first phase of a business rule project. In a second phase the optimization results are input into the business rule modelling process. Business rules governance is a higher-level process and influences all other process inside the Lifecycle.

One of the most important processes inside this lifecycle is the location of all relevant business rules and the description of those rules. This process is called business rules discovery process. Let’s have a look at some details of this process.

One of the business rules bibles is written by Barbara von Halle. She describe in her book “Business Rules Applied“ the most significant characteristics of the rule discovery process as follows:

• Separating rules from other system artefacts.
• Tracing rules by relating them to business context (organisational policies, strategies, tactics, goals, objectives).
• Externalizing rules by expressing them in natural language, naming them and classifying them.
• Positioning rules for change by given them well-defined jurisdictions and establishing business consensus.
• Positioning rules for change by associating them with the knowledge they reference and the knowledge they create.

To be continued…

Read More about Business Rules: www.aris.com/rules