1. COIT20235 Business Process Modelling
Week 7: Business Process & Rules Repository

2. Objectives On completion of this module you should be able to:
define business rules
describe a business rules repository
explain the relationship between a business rule engine and BPM
examine the relationship of organisational security policy and a BPM repository
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3. Business Rules Definition
Business Perspective
a business rule is an obligation concerning conduct, action, practice, or procedure within a particular activity or sphere.
Note: a business would need business rules to operate even if it did not use software in any form.
Information Systems Perspective
a business rule is a statement that defines or constrains some aspect of the business.  It is intended to assert business structure, or to control or influence the behaviour of the business.
The Business Rules Group (BRG), accessed August 16, 2012,
Ask the students to use the above rules and combine them to produce a business rule for business processing.
Business rules describe the operations, definitions and constraints that apply within an organisation when attempting to achieve its goals.
© Marilyn Wells 2012

4. Business Rules Specify
Checks to be made on relationships in a task dataset and that the relationship conforms to statutory restrictions
Values that must be set in an entity record
Actions that must be performed
Rules may be conditional and specify a condition when the rule is applied
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5. Repository Definition
A place or storage where things are kept for safekeeping
For example, a library is a repository of books.
Purpose of a business rules repository
Provides security and integrity for business rule and related information
Supports stakeholder’s business rules information needs either directly or indirectly
Queries and reports rule re-use, traceability and impact analysis
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6. Business Rules Principles - 1
As businesses change so should be business rules evolve
When a business process changes so should the business rule evolve
The business rules must be clear and be easily understood by ALL stakeholders
A business rule must make sense across the whole organisation
Business rules must be able to be explicitly stated
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7. Business Rules Principles - 2
A business rule must mean exactly what the words used to express it mean
Business rules must have a practical purpose
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8. Articulate Business Rules
Business concepts are ideas for a new product or a new approach using a current product, described with enough information to allow an informed decision to be made.
Fact models define shared business concepts
Fact models (concept models) explicitly state the process events using business expressions containing nouns and verbs
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9. Business Policies become Business Rules
Business policies define critical events in organisational operations
Core business rule is developed directly from a business policy
Business rules ensure compliance with business policy
Note 1: if policy changes, so should the business rules aligned with that policy
Note 2: Not all business rules are derived from business policy. Rules might also come from legal or government regulations
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10. Harmon, P., 2007, Business Process Change, Morgan Kaufmann, pp 288
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11. Business Processes & Business Rules
Business processes and business rules are not the same!
Business rules do NOT reference business processes or tasks by name, but by the state to be achieved
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12. Relating Business Process Models & Business Rules - 1
Never embed the evaluation criteria of a condition in the condition itself
Rather name the conditional using an adjective. For example valid or required for the following example
Evaluation criteria for conditionals should be expressed as business rules
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13. Relating Business Process Models & Business Rules - 2
Conditional Flow “if owner approval required”
Ask the students for some examples of business rules that that can evaluate the conditional flow on slide 11
Ross, R., G., and Lam, G. S. W, 2011, Building Business Solutions: Business Analysis with Business Rules, Business Rule Solutions, LLC Chapter 6.
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14. Relating Business Process Models & Business Rules - 3
Business processes transform inputs to outputs guidance through policies, standards and business rules
Guidance is provided by business rules
Knowledge is represented by the business rules
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15. Business Rules and Strategy
Harmon, P., 2007, Business Process Change, Morgan Kaufmann, pp 285
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16. Categories of Business Rules
The four categories are:
Definitions of business rule
The language used to express a business rule is the most basic element of the rule as it describes how people think and talk about things.
Facts relating terms to each other
The facts within an organisation which relate to each other can be described as the operating structure of an organisation.
Constraints (action assertions)
This category of business rule prevents an action taking place. For example data may or may not be updated.
Derivations
Business rules define how knowledge in one form is transformed into other knowledge, and possibly a different form.
© Marilyn Wells 2012

17. Business Rules Engine
Software that executes one or more rules in a production environment.
Allows operational decisions to be maintained external to the application
Engine software, as part of a business rule management system
maintains and manages all the rules
verifies rule consistency
defines relationship between different rules
interfaces with application software as required
© Marilyn Wells 2012

18. Workshop Activity
Research software vendors and compile a table listing the security features included in their SOA software.
 Compare and contrast these features and prepare a brief report for management ranking the vendors from the most secure to the least secure.
 Complete the tutorial questions.
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19. Lecture Content Source
Ross, R., G., and Lam, G. S. W, 2011, Building Business Solutions: Business Analysis with Business Rules, Business Rule Solutions, LLC.
The Business Rules Group, 2000, Defining Business Rules – What are they really?. Accessed 17/8/2012
Jackson, M., and Twaddle, G., 1999, Business Process Implementation: Building Workflow Systems, Pearson Education Ltd, Harlow
Harmon, P., 2007, Business Process Change, Morgan Kaufmann, Burlington
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20. Next Week
Implementing Process Management
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