This is the fourth post in the Business Rules and the SDLC series.I have covered the following till now.

1. Business Rules and Software Requirements
2. Business Rules and Application Design
3. Introducing the Business Rules Development Cycle

The Purpose of Business Rules Testing

Now, the purpose of testing business rules is two fold!

Goal No 1

Are my business rules written the way I wanted them to be written (Correctness)

Goal No 2

Are my business rules effective?

Can I improve them so that I can achieve my business goals better.May be even improve by business performance?

Now, Goal No 1 can be achieved through the regular methods known to us.

Have Testcase, Will Test

But, Goal No 2 is essentially a business function, and will need participation from the business directly. IT cannot possibly be expected to execute this responsibility.

The Business Rules Testing Storyline

To be consistent with my new found passion for using images, here is a graphic that details rule testing activities by different stages in the Business Rules Life Cycle.

What you see in the image is a description of where in the Business Rules Life Cycle testing is required, what testing activities you might be interested in, and who will be the participants. For a better introduction to the Rule Life Cycle, go here.

As is evident, the activities that target Goal No 1 will be part of the Rule Implementation, Rule Testing, Rule Deployment and the Change Management Phases.

But the activities that target Goal No 2 will be part of the Rule Capture and the Rule Refinement Phase. I have written more on analyzing business rules for business performance in an earlier write up here.

One word of caution here! The diagram is intended to put into perspective the different activities that go into Business Rules Management,and is not intended to be a description of any process, what so ever.

Summary and Closing Remarks

Business Rules Testing has two goals essentially.

One is to enforce compliance with stated, captured business rules. This can be done through known software testing methods, supported by appropriate tooling.

The Second is to ensure that your business rules are effective. Here, you are interested in business impact of your Decisions

UPDATE: I should have pointed out this white paper that the Architect for QuickRules Java had written on Why Conventional Testing is not Enough for Business Rules Applications