Blinded by Requirements - Don’t Miss those Business Rules
Published by Rajgo September 6th, 2007 in Business Rules, Software RequirementsScott Sehlhorst talks about Business Rules hidden in Software Requirements. This is something that I have written on before. You can read Business Rules & Software Requirements for a more detailed writeup on this subject.
In short, here is what I think.
- Business Rules ARE NOT Requirements
- Software Requirements Must refer to Business Rules, and NEVER the other way round
- Business Rules evolve independent of Requirements
- Business Rules changes are driven by the Business, and not IT
- Business Rules Cannot be Managed using a conventional Requirements Management tools. You need a BRMS provide those capabilities.
Both Scott and James share the same perspective, and they have my complete agreement on this.
Thanks for the shout out. Are you going to be at the business rules forum to hear Scott and I speak on this topic? Would love to meet you, not just interact on the blogs!
JT
The EDM blog
My ebizQ blog
Author of Smart (Enough) Systems
Rajgo,
You should come over to the Requirements Networking Group
at http://www.requirementsnetwork.com/, we have Business
Rules chat group run by B.Van Halle.
Thanks from me too. The only thing I would say differently is about business rules management tools. You can do the job with any tool, although spreadsheets are the lowest-tech way that I know of to be at all effective, when managing volatile rules.
What I encourage is that folks use roughly the same level of formalism in both their management of rules and requirements. Recognizing that different teams operate with different levels of requirements artifact rigour, and operate effectively, I believe the same applies to rules management.
I completely agree that more sophisticated solutions are more effective. But they aren’t always more cost-effective. As a tiny consulting company, we’re limited to using spreadsheets for rules management, except when clients already have a solution in place. And we can make them work. Not as easy to use as other solutions, but effective enough. A lot depends on the people, the processes, and the volatility of the content.
But it can be done. Use the “most formal” system you can cost-justify.