Step 8 of 10 Steps towards the Agile Enterprise

In Step 7, I discussed how an organization could promote collaboration and involve the business in Business Decision making handled by their systems.

The next logical step is then to evolve systems and working practices to manage, secure and govern access to your Business Rules.

Before we go further, it will help to define what does managing, securing & governing rules really mean ?So, here we go.

Configuration management

1. Configuration management has been used by IT for years in the form of SCS like VSS, CVS, SVN, Starteam, Perforce etc. But these traditional SCS will not do for rules because they do not understand rules as rules, but as Data
2. You need Configuration management for rules because you need to & preserve Policies that we applicable earlier, or those that will become applicable in the future. This is required for legal & regulatory purposes.
3. Many scenarios require that a organization be able to replay a market scenario. In other words, you need to be able to re-run my system with historical data, with historical rules. (Stock exchanges, trading platforms, mortgage loan companies, insurance product companies etc)
4. You need a special software system called a Rule Repository that understands Rules as Rules. You can also think of a Rule Repository like a Rule base, analogous to a database

Security & Access Control

1. Business Rules determine how & why your company is taking its business decisions. In that they represent your critical business knowledge
2. It is absolutely important that only the authorized and competent business personnel be allowed to change these policies, or even view them
3. The Who, Why, When, What , Where of Business Policy change MUST be audited, controlled and secured for legal & regulatory reasons as well in many scenarios (SOX, for example)

Alerts & Approvals

1. Whenever important changes go into the Rule Repository, responsible Business Personnel need to be notified.
2. Where ever required, Business Policy updates MUST be approved by an authorized Business Manager(s)

Standardized Policy Deployments

1. Organizations with experience in employing Business Rules technology, can opt for standardized policy deployments across the enterprise
2. A central Rule Repository holding all the company-wide business policies can be employed towards this effect.

Final Words ..

The above requirements illustrate why you need to manage, secure and govern your business policies. Business Policies (rules) are precious assets of an Enterprise. Business Rule Repositories provide the right capabilities for Enterprises to help them meet these requirements.

Next Steps

Up till now, in this story, we have seen why it is important to understand Business Decision Automation is different from Business Process automation.

We saw how Business Rules Management systems can help Organization to not only automate their Business Decisions, but can help Enterprises to take control of their Business Decisions back into their own hands, with IT available to help in times of trouble.
We also saw what constitutes a Business Rules Management System.

Now, the next step is how can an Organization improve their Decision making? Your Decisions are automated, visible to you, you have them in your control, but how will you find out whether your current business policies are effective? Are they helping you meet your business goals?

Next post, Analyzing Business Rules for Business Performance - Rule Analytics .