Methods and Concepts for Business Rules Management

Business rules are among the fastest changing business concepts in many organizations. The frequency of change is caused due to changing customer demands, changing regulation, increased regulation, and changing strategies. At the same time questions for more transparency are emerging, thus enforcing explanation of the applied business rules in a specific situation. In the current body of knowledge, Business Rules Management (BRM) is often classified as a technical solution. This perspective views BRM as an assembly of software with its associated hardware infrastructure, supporting the BRM lifecycle. Yet, it is the combination of methods, processes, actors and technology that deliver the value proposition. Research focusing on improving BRM practices and its value proposition is still nascent. Therefore, the main question in this PhD thesis is: “How can business rules management be configured and valued in organizations?” The BRM problem space is a complex domain. Therefore, a structure for the body of knowledge with regard to BRM had to be developed first. We propose the BRM problem space framework, existing of service systems, as a solution to the BRM problem space. Analysis revealed nine individual service systems, in casu elicitation, design, verification, validation, deployment, execution, monitor, audit, and version. Further research also showed configuration per organization of the service systems is influenced by eight situational factors. In addition to BRM, Business Process Management (BPM) also focuses on controllability of business activities in organizations. Although both management principles have the same focus they approach manageability and controllability from different angles. As more organizations are deploying BPM systems as well as BRM systems, efforts should be made to synchronize both. To answer the question: “How is BRM positioned in relation to BPM?”, a framework to connect both fields was developed. The framework positions five different business rules types on the business process lifecycle. The five business rule categories are: 1) Structural Sequencing Business Rules, 2) Actor Inclusion Business Rules, 3) Transactional Sequencing Business Rules, 4) Data Control Business Rules, and 5) Outcome Control Business Rules. The business rule categories indicate where business rules affect business processes and consequently help to position BRM in relation to BPM. The last part of the research focused on modeling Transactional Sequencing Business Rules that are applied to design and define decisions. Control over anomalies such as insertion, update and deletion are crucial in order to properly structure Transactional Sequencing Business Rules. Building on work of VanThienen and Snoeck (1993), we developed a normalization procedure based on representational difference analysis of existing business rules modeling languages, relational theory and database normalization.