“The Business

Rule Revolution”
Book Excerpt
Running Business the Right Way

Editors:
Barbara von Halle and
Larry Goldberg
Guest Contribution:
John Zachman

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 C o n t e n t s

NOTE: This is the Table of Contents (TOC) from the book for
your reference. The eBook TOC (below) differs in page
count from the tradebook TOC.

Letter from Editor An Important Letter from the Editors: Is the

Business Rule Revolution Real? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii

Authors Contributing Authors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii

Introduction Introduction: Welcome to the Business

Rule Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii

Part I The Compelling World of Business Rules

Chapter 1 The Essential Business Rule Roadmap . . . . 3

What is the Business Rule Revolution? . . . . . . . . . . . 3
What Exactly Are Business Rules? . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
What is the Business Rules Approach? . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Putting the Business First. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
What is the Rule Maturity Model?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
What the Rule Maturity Model is Not . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
How the Rule Maturity Model is Used Today . . . . . . 12
Today’s Leaders: RMM Levels 1, 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Tomorrow’s Leaders: RMM Levels 3, 4, 5 . . . . . . . . 17
The Rule Maturity Model and the Changing
Relationship between Business and IT . . . . . . . . . . 20
What Happens Next-Technology Predictions
in the Rule Maturity Model? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Summary and Future Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Chapter 2 Business Rules Marketplace Today

and Tomorrow: Based on a
Maturity Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Roots of the Business Rules Approach . . . . . . . . . . 23
Short-term Purpose of the Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Longer-term Purpose of the Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

The Business Rule Revolution vii

 1. Industries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2. Point of Contact for the Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3. Business Rule Champion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4. Scope of Business Rules Approach. . . . . . . . . . . 28
5. Major Motivations for the Business
Rules Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6. The Need for Good Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
7. Is a BRMS Part of the Solution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
8. Is a BPM or Workflow Product Part
of the Solution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
9. Where Are Source Rules Stored? . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
10. Process for Discovering Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
11. Current Sources of Rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
12. Anticipated or Actual Classifications
of Target Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
13. Desired Software Functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
14. Common Current States of Rule Maturity . . . . . 37
15. Common Target States of Rule Maturity . . . . . . 38
Survey Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Lessons in the Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Next Steps for the Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Reference to Another Survey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Chapter 3 Enterprise Architecture: Managing

Complexity and Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
The Changing Enterprise Concept. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Increased Complexity in the Information Age . . . . . 47
The Zachman Framework for
Enterprise Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
A Framework Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
The Zachman Framework and Business Rules . . . . 56
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Chapter 4 The Business Architecture of Business

Rules Based Enterprises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Business Rules in the Context of Business
Enterprise Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
A Brief Discussion of the KPI RMM and its
Impact on Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
An Architectural Approach to Business Rules . . . . . 63

viii Contents
 The Rule Authoring and Governance
Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
The Rule Design Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
The Rule Deployment Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
A Brief—But Important—Digression
from Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
Returning to the Architectural Considerations
in the Design Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Deployment Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
A Special Problem: Business Rules versus
Business Process Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Part II The Business Side of Business Rules

Chapter 5 Business Engineering and the Role of

Business Rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
A Definition of Business Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . .81
Three Ways to Represent Knowledge Behind
Business Engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
The Importance of Capturing Decisions in
Business Engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Business Decisioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Incorporating Business Level Specifications with
Automation Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
The Gap in Business Entities Today . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
The Gap in Business Processes Today . . . . . . . . . . 90
The Business Rule Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Back to Business Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Chapter 6 A BPM-Driven Approach to Business

Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
About OPERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Business Drivers for OPERS’s Business Rules . . . 100
Establishing a Business Rules Group and
Related Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
IT-Driven Approach versus Business and
BPM-Driven Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
The Business-Driven Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

The Business Rule Revolution ix

 Chapter 7 Modeling the Business: Improving Process
Models through Business Rules . . . . . . . . 117
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
The Impact of Business Rules on the
Process Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
The Impact of Business Rules on the
Data Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Business Rules and Business System
Requirements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Business Rules and Testing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Chapter 8 Better Rules Through Innovative

Rule-Authoring Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Laying the Foundation: The Concepts and
Complexity Behind the Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
The Learning Curve and Dealing With
Rule Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
The Rule Wizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Wizards Are Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Application Emulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Ongoing Efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Conclusions and Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Part III The Technology Side of Business Rules

Chapter 9 The Role of the Rule Architect in

Organizing Thousands of Rules . . . . . . . . 165
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Introducing the Role of the Rule Architect . . . . . . . 166
Architecture: General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Architecture: Rule-Specific. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Relationship of the Rule Architect to
Other Architects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
BPMS and BRMS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
How Best to Write a Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
How to Express Rules in Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
How to Organize Rule Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Summary of the Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

x Contents
 Suggested Topics to Explore Further . . . . . . . . . . .180
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Chapter 10 Building a Business Rules Architecture

that Will Stand the Test of Time . . . . . . . . 181
The Climate of Today’s Global Market Requires
a Business Rules Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Delivering Product Strategy Through
Business Rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
What is Business Rules Architecture? . . . . . . . . . . 184
Process, Rules, Objects and How They
Work Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
How to Identify Rules vs. Non-rules . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
What is Considered a Business Rule? . . . . . . . . . . 186
What is Not Considered a Business Rule?. . . . . . . 187
Guidelines for the Business Rule
Acquisition Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Where and How to Find the Business Rules . . . . .188
Business Rule Analysis Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . .189
Business Rule Implementation Guidelines . . . . . . . 190
Guidelines for Defining an Enterprise
Business Rules Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Guiding Principles for Defining an Enterprise
Business Rules Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Business Rules Design Guidelines. . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Roles and Responsibilities of Individuals Involved
in Business Rules Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
The Business Rules Architect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Business Rules Analyst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Systems Integration Engineer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
The Controversy of Who Owns the
Business Rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Chapter 11 Positioning the Enterprise for

Business Rules: People, Processes,
and Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
The Call for Business Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
The Starting Point for Business Rules
in the Enterprise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
People: The Collaborative Organization. . . . . . . . . 203
Process: Stewardship for the
Tactical Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

The Business Rule Revolution xi

 Organization: Governance for the
Strategic Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Chapter 12 Achieving Rule Maturity for

Competitive Advantage — A Case
Study of Equifax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
A Recent History of Business Rules at Equifax . . . 213
Why did Equifax select ILOG JRules? . . . . . . . . . . 216
How is JRules helping Equifax?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
How Have Customer Experiences Like Equifax’s
Influenced ILOG to Enhance JRules? . . . . . . . . . . 219
Lessons Learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
What do Equifax Customers Think?. . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Looking Ahead—InterConnect and JRules 6 . . . . . 223
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

Chapter 13 Implementing an Enterprise

Policy Hub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Beyond Productivity Gain to
Enterprise Policy Hubs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
The Blaze Advisor Business Rules
Management System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Key Strengths and Features of Blaze Advisor . . . . 236
Blaze Advisor Customers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Definition of an Enterprise Policy Hub . . . . . . . . . . 241
The Benefits of an Enterprise Policy Hub . . . . . . . 245
Best Practices in Implementing an
Enterprise Policy Hub. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Integrating an Enterprise Policy Hub with
BPM, SOA, and BI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Chapter 14 Putting the Business Back in

Business Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
The Significance of RMM Level 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
The Greatest Challenge for RMM Level 2 . . . . . . . 256
Meeting the Challenge of RMM Level 2 . . . . . . . . . 257
Sample Best Practices and Standards Today . . . . 258
Enterprise Architecture, the Zachman

xii Contents
 Framework, and Business Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Separating Business Rules in a Process Chart . . . 261
Separating Business Rules in a Use Case. . . . . . . 262
The Rule-Rich Decision As a Critical
Business Lever . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Business vs. Technical Analysis of
Business Rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Tracing Business Rules to Process Charts in the
KPI STEP™ Workbench. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Tracing Business Rules to Use Cases in the
KPI STEP™ Workbench. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Tracing Object Models to Business Rules in the
KPI STEP™ Workbench. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Pulling It All Together and Delivering Rule
Maturity Model Level 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Beyond Rule Maturity Model Level 2 . . . . . . . . . . .273
Summary and Lessons Learned from RMM
Level 2 Software. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
Essential Lessons Learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

Part IV Wrap Up

Chapter 15 The Time is Now: The Economic Imperative

for the Business Rules Approach. . . . . . . 279

About KPI About Knowledge Partners, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

IBM® Rational Unified Process or
RUP® Plug-in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Business Rules Mining Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . 288
KPI Rule Maturity Model (KPI RMM™) . . . . . . . . . 288
KPI STEP™ License Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

Your Book Create Thought Leadership for

Your Company? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

The Business Rule Revolution xiii

 Introduction

Introduction: Welcome to the

Business Rule Revolution
Barbara von Halle

Why This Business rules are everywhere. The right ones

Book? bring success, represent the smartest thinking,
and make people such as customers feel good.
The wrong rules bring trouble and uncertainty.
You never know when the wrong rules may
strike. You probably don’t even know which ones
they are.

Obviously, business rules are the very core of

any business and determine whether it succeeds
and how well, or fails and how badly. And yet, the
current state of business rule best practices in
the marketplace is unknown, until this book. This
book is part of a series destined to be the Voice
of the Business Rule Revolution, sharing and
measuring its progress.

The Business Rule Revolution is the awakening

of business leaders to the importance of
business integrity and governance through
management of individual rules. Some
organizations are making great investments in it.
Some have not begun. And most, are
somewhere in the middle. But, there is no
published book to serve as an anchor point—a
book where real people share real experiences
so that the Business Rule Revolution does its
job.

The Business Rule Revolution 1

 Six important aspects of the book are:

1. It is for managers and decision-makers who

make things happen in their organizations.
2. It addresses business rules to be leveraged
for agility, compliance, and corporate
intelligence as a key mechanism for
engineering the business itself.
3. It is not meant to be read cover-to-cover.
4. Together, the sections provide a
step-by-step management approach that
crosses business and information
technology barriers.
5. Real case studies are written by real people
as practiced in well-respected corporations,
government agencies, consultancies, and
software vendors.
6. Leading technology is highlighted.

Who Is This This book is for anyone interested in starting,

Book For? planning, learning about, or participating in the
Business Rule Revolution. These are the people
who see the value and want to be part of it.

How Is This There is no book like this one in the business rule
Book Unique? space. Its uniqueness is that no one person
wrote it. It is a true anthology of experiences,
successes and of disappointments, but full of
practical guidance, contributed by everyday
people.

Goals of This As the first book in the series, the goals of this
Book book are to:

• Expose the practicality of the Business Rules

Approach through successes in major
organizations

2 Introduction
 • Bring business and information technology
professionals together

• Present the achievements from a Business

Rules Approach for both business and
information technology

Who Wrote Most of the people who wrote this book are not
This Book? professional writers, teachers or speakers,
although some of them present at Business
Rules and related conferences. They are not
theorists, although some have formal education
in fields related to business rules, such as
artificial intelligence, knowledge engineering,
and software engineering. Most of them don’t
know each other. The one common
characteristic they share is their generosity in
disclosing their business rule lives to you.

While only a few chapters have been

coordinated with other chapters, together they
tell a true and complete story. The story has a
business side and a technical side. These sides
come together in these pages, to be shared by
business and technical people. Our hope is that
it brings these people together to realize the
same business goals through business rules.

How to Read The book has three sections.

This Book
For both business and technical audiences,
Section 1 is an introduction to business rule
topics. As such, it summarizes the current and
desired state of practitioners of the Business
Rules Approach. It explains the Rule Maturity
Model (KPI RMM™), where the marketplace is on
that model today, and where it wants to go. The
Rule Maturity Model is a prevalent theme
throughout many of the chapters.

The Business Rule Revolution 3

 Section 1 also contains a pivotal chapter from
John Zachman, clarifying the concept of
Enterprise Architecture which is the application
of traditional architecture principles to an
enterprise, not merely technology. From here,
Larry Goldberg’s chapter presents the role of
business rules in an organization’s Enterprise
Architecture.

For the business audience, Section 2 focuses

on understanding business processes and
insights into the business policy maker as rule
author. Specifically, Neal McWhorter explains
business engineering with business rules, Art
Moore and Michael Beck uncover the integration
of business process modeling and business
rules, and Larry Ward and Jordan Masanga
explain how business process management
(BPM) activities improve the business (with ties
to business rules). A very special chapter from
John Semmel describes home-grown software,
by which non-technical rule authors conceive,
author, analyze, and simulate rules.

For the more technical audience, Section 3

covers topics about rule architecture and
technical rule support. Starting off, Gene Weng
and May Abraham each contribute a chapter on
the role and importance of the rule architect and
rule architecture when building complex rule
systems. Brian Stucky, representing a business
rules service company called InScope Solutions,
provides insights into positioning an enterprise
for business rules in terms of people, processes,
and organization. It is in Section 3 that software
vendors present technology solutions to
business rule opportunities. Two leading
business rule management system (BRMS)
vendors are highlighted in this section. James
Taylor, representing Fair Isaac Corporation,
describes the use of business rule technology in

4 Introduction
 delivering an enterprise policy hub. Linda
Nieporent, representing ILOG, presents a case
study with Equifax as it evolved in its use of
ILOG’s BRMS. Both vendors and their products
have been around and evolved for several
decades. They have much experience to share
and interesting strategic visions for the Business
Rule Revolution. Also in this section is a
description of the KPI STEP™ Workbench as a
source rule repository supporting organizations
at Level 2 of the Rule Maturity Model.

The Open Door Hopefully, this book is the first in a long series.
We welcome new contributors and chapters. The
journey begins today. Make this book, these
authors, and this series your business rule
almanac.

Sincerely,

Barbara von Halle

Larry Goldberg

The Business Rule Revolution 5

 C h a p t e r

1 The Essential Business

Rule Roadmap

Barbara von Halle

What is the Business Rule

Revolution?
The Business Rule Revolution is happening
everywhere, even if it seems invisible. In fact, the
business rules that are unseen or unknown are
precisely the ones that can do the most damage.
Invisible rules lurk behind a lack of proper
business rule management—creating a
precarious business climate for these times.

Consider the growing and painful awareness of

questionable accounting practices by some
corporate executives in some major
organizations. What is at play here? Business
rules are at play—good or bad, known or
unknown. In these cases, rules were broken or
secret. Some were improper rules applied to
achieve improper objectives. Think of the
Business Rule Revolution as appropriate parties
knowing what the rules are, applying the rules in

The Business Rule Revolution 7

 all the right places, and the organization
therefore taking full responsibility for its rules and
its integrity.

In a nutshell, the Business Rule Revolution

represents an emerging undeniable need for the
right people to know what a business’s rules are,
to be able to change those rules on demand
according to changing objectives, to be
accountable for those rules, and to predict as
closely as possible the impact of rule changes on
the business, its customers, its partners, its
competition, and its regulators.

This means that the Business Rule Revolution

reflects a pent-up need for business people to
play a more prominent role in safely stewarding
the business’s rules from their inception to
execution, with probable automation. Otherwise,
the business is driving in the dark, off-road
without headlights—an environment where
serious accidents can happen. An organization
aiming to better manage its important business
rules needs a goal, a roadmap, and a plan for
action. This is where KPI’s Rule Maturity Model
(KPI RMM™ or RMM) fits.

This chapter explains the KPI Rule Maturity

Model as the essential roadmap by which
organizations chart their course in the Business
Rule Revolution. This chapter covers:

• What exactly are business rules?

• What is the Business Rules Approach?
• Putting the business first
• What is the Rule Maturity Model?
• What the Rule Maturity Model is not?
• How the Rule Maturity Model is used today?

8 Chapter 1: The Essential Business Rule Roadmap

 • Today’s leaders: RMM levels 1, 2
• Tomorrow’s leaders: RMM levels 3, 4, 5
• The Rule Maturity Model and the changing
relationship between business and IT
• What happens next-technology predictions
in the Rule Maturity Model?
• Summary and future vision

What Exactly Are Business

Rules?
Business Rules are the ultimate levers with
which business management is able to guide
and control the business. In fact, the business’s
rules are the means by which an organization
implements competitive strategy, promotes
policy, and complies with legal obligations.

In reality, not every business rule is worth

explicitly stating or even automating. Also, while
business rule management systems (BRMS) are
extremely valuable, not all business rules belong
in one. A critical aspect of a successful Business
Rules Approach, therefore, is assessing the
value of specific business rules to the business,
how often those rules need to change, how
urgently the change is needed, and how much
control the business people need or want over
those changes, from start to finish.

The following are examples of business rules or

business policies as a business person might
initially express them:

• A premium customer is every customer

whose credit rating is A or B.

The Business Rule Revolution 9

 • If a premium customer requests a loan for
greater than $500,000, allow a delay in the
first payment date by 30 days.
• The formula for computing a student’s
cumulative grade-point average is found on
page 6 of the student policy manual.
• A driver should proceed in a particular
direction if the street is labeled “senso
unico,” but can proceed in the opposite
direction without penalty unless the driver
causes an accident.
• If a loan applicant’s outside credit rating is
marginal and the applicant also has a credit
card balance greater than $5,000, then it is
highly likely that the applicant will default on
a loan.
• An employee who has completed five years
of full-time employment with the company is
entitled to four weeks of paid vacation.
• Stock options vest at a rate of one-third each
year over three years.
• A customer with outstanding payments due
must pay in full prior to a new order being
shipped.
• A preferred customer automatically receives
free express shipping on all orders.
These examples illustrate that there are different
kinds of business rules. Some rules impose
constraints (constraint rules), some provide
suggestions (guideline rules), some make
calculations (computation rules), some infer
interim conclusions (inferred knowledge rules),
and some infer actions (action-enabler rules).

10 Chapter 1: The Essential Business Rule Roadmap

 What is the Business Rules
Approach?
There have been generations of advances in
business and software engineering techniques
and technology; yet, the rules of most
businesses remain lost, unknown, inconsistent,
inadequate, or simply resistant to change. Such
rules, if crucial to business operations, are a
hidden liability. Unmanaged rules result in lost
time-to-market, regulation violations, and
customer dissatisfaction: a sub-optimal running
of the business at best.

Today, the Business Rules Approach is best

defined as a formal way of managing and
automating an organization’s business rules so
that the business behaves and evolves as its
leaders intend. Organizations today apply the
Business Rules Approach to rules carried out by
humans during the course of manual processes
as well as those automated in systems.
Therefore, the Business Rules Approach
enables business leaders to confirm that the right
rules are guiding the business in all of the right
places. This becomes possible by identifying
rule-rich business processes and understanding
the importance of the rules that are to guide
specific aspects of those processes.

The Business Rules Approach includes tasks,

roles, and a rule repository for business people,
rules engines for automation, and formal ways of
expressing rules so that the business’s policies
and supporting rules can be quantified,
accessed, and changed as needed.

When the Business Rules Approach results in

the automation of rules in systems, often a
business rule management system (BRMS) is
deployed. Applying the Business Rules

The Business Rule Revolution 11

 Approach with a BRMS “builds better,
changeable systems faster than any previous
approach.”1 Real-world experience proves not
only that business rule projects are completed
faster, at less cost, and with less risk, but they
continue to deliver substantial savings in time
and money because rule maintenance is
significantly accelerated.

Putting the Business First

While the Business Rules Approach has wide
applicability, it always begins with the business
itself, specifically its goals. After all, business
rules existed long before there were computers.
The Business Rules Approach recognizes that
business rules are first about business
directions, and later about databases and
engines. With this perspective in mind, the
Business Rules Approach makes possible the
opportunity to manage the most important rules
of the business, no matter what kind they are or
what kind of technology they best belong in, if
any.

This means that the adoption of the Business

Rules Approach starts by understanding
business objectives and letting those objectives
drive the business rule management practices
that are optimum for the organization or project.

To be business-centric, the Business Rules

Approach requires a source rule repository. A
source rule repository provides the following:

1. von Halle, Barbara, Business Rules Applied (2002:

John Wiley & Sons, New York)

12 Chapter 1: The Essential Business Rule Roadmap

 • Storage of rules for the business audience, in
a central or coordinated location
• Access to rules by anyone who needs to
know them
• Analysis of rule sets for redundancy,
inconsistency, etc.
• Involvement of all stakeholders in the rule
change process
• Traceability to where rules are executing in
the business and its systems
• Traceability of business rules to relevant
items, such as processes, use cases,
decisions, business terms, data fields,
stakeholders, motivations, data, and object
models.
Critical to the Business Rules Approach is a
newly defined business rule life cycle. It starts
with a business opportunity or challenge, moves
through the articulation of policies and rules with
a business focus, and may culminate in
automated rules in systems. The newly defined
business rule life cycle typically enables shorter
change cycles and may shift more of the
responsibility for stewarding rule changes from
technical to business people.

The optimum business rule management

practices will enable management of underlying
business rules by appropriate business
stewards, regardless of what kinds of rules they
turn out to be, what kind of rule authoring
techniques will work best, and what kinds of
technology options might be optimal. The
optimum business rule management practices
should therefore be designed to fit an
organization’s or project’s goals and culture. This
brings us to the role of the RMM.

The Business Rule Revolution 13

 What is the Rule Maturity
Model?
Essentially, the RMM is a simple and practical
model by which an organization aligns its
business objectives with the optimum business
rule management practices for achieving those
objectives. It provides a straight-forward
roadmap, customizable for each organization or
project.

Like other maturity models, the RMM has six

levels, starting from 0 and leading to 5. In a level
0 organization, people are unaware that
business rules have a value worth
contemplating; at level 5, organizations are
utilizing business rules as proactive and
predictive levers for change and compliance, as
well as for gaining momentum over the
competition, and predicting the future.
Therefore, each RMM level represents an
alignment between specific organizational
objectives and corresponding business rule
management practices, supported by refined
roles, techniques, and software requirements.
Each level also represents a major change in an
organization’s culture and its ability to reach for
higher goals. Therefore, skipping levels is not
recommended.

14 Chapter 1: The Essential Business Rule Roadmap

 At a glance, each level of the RMM represents
one major goal with respect to business rule
management, as depicted in Figure 1 and listed
below:

• RMM Level 1 Î Knowledge of Rules

• RMM Level 2 Î Agility of Rules
• RMM Level 3 Î Consistency and Alignment
of Rules
• RMM Level 4 Î Prediction of Rules
• RMM Level 5 Î Stewardship of Rules.

Figure 1: The RMM at a Glance

The Business Rule Revolution 15

 What the Rule Maturity Model
is Not
The RMM is not a report card. In fact, higher
RMM levels are not necessarily better than lower
ones. It would be incorrect to judge organizations
or projects seeking or achieving lower levels of
the RMM as falling short in any way. To the
contrary, applying the RMM successfully means
achieving the RMM level that delivers desired
business objectives through the managing of
related business rules.

Figure 2 depicts more details of the RMM2, along

three vectors. The first vector is the business
value which addresses the influence over rule
changes materialized by each RMM level. The
second vector is the technical state which
describes where rules reside and how they are
managed at each level. The third vector is the
business control which alludes to the role of
non-technical rule stewards and how that role
evolves at each level of the RMM.

2. The original version of the RMM is at

www.kpiusa.com/rmm.htm

16 Chapter 1: The Essential Business Rule Roadmap

 Figure 2: The RMM in More Detail

How the Rule Maturity Model

is Used Today
To date, various organizations use the RMM for
one or more of four main purposes:

• Assess their current state to understand

where they are today with respect to
managing business rules. Most are at RMM
Level 0.
• Define their target state to determine how far
they should go in managing business rules.
Most are aiming for RMM Level 1 or 2, with a
few aiming for RMM Level 3.
• Certify achievement to publicize to internal
and external audiences their successes as
they achieve targeted RMM levels.
• Determine the business value of
incorporating the Business Rules Approach
to drive the adoption of the Business Rules

The Business Rule Revolution 17

 Approach by targeted business objectives
and to determine the means and metrics of
measuring its outcome.
Organizations using the RMM to assess current
and target states begin by identifying business
objectives to be achieved by managing business
rules. This leads to answers to the following
questions before determining the desired target
RMM Level:

• What objectives are achievable by better

managing business rules?
• What are the short-term and long-term
timeframes for achieving those objectives?
• Which business rules are worth managing?
• Who is to play which roles in managing
business rules? Specifically, who drives
policies to new and changed rules for
different parts of the business?
• Is there a need for joint stewardship for some
policies and rules?
• How will political conflicts concerning rules
be settled?
• What technology is needed to support each
of the roles?
Use of the RMM to certify achievement of
specific RMM levels has uncovered a critical
consideration. The RMM implies that all three
vectors be managed at the same level of
maturity. That is, there is danger in achieving an
RMM Level 3 for the technical state (i.e.,
delivering enterprise-worthy rule authoring
software, etc.) but an RMM Level 2 for the
business control vector (i.e., putting that
technology into the wrong hands). Inconsistent
maturity causes unexpected, possibly
devastating havoc. An organization exhibiting

18 Chapter 1: The Essential Business Rule Roadmap

 disparate RMM levels in its business rule
management may be dysfunctional, putting
anticipated benefits in jeopardy. In fact, most
shortcomings of the Business Rules Approach in
practice can be attributed to inconsistent
achievement of RMM levels across these
vectors.

Today’s Leaders: RMM

Levels 1, 2
It is important to understand the culture and
capabilities of organizations at each level of the
RMM in more detail. Below, each level is
introduced using Figure 1, adding the detailed
explanations for Figure 2.

Level 0: A Level 0 organization is unaware of business

Unaware rules as being special. The rules remain hidden
and unchartered. They are buried as details in
process descriptions, policy and procedures
manuals, or in system designs where they are
vulnerable to becoming lost and unknown and
resistant to change. As a result, no one knows
where to start looking, where to stop, or how long
it may take to find certain rules.

Even more importantly, business rules are not

managed rigorously as strategic levers for
achieving objectives. People in an organization
at RMM Level 0 carry out business transactions
often without knowing what the rules are or
where they are executing in business processes
or automated systems. The organization
survives with rule changes that are difficult,
time-consuming, and costly.

The Business Rule Revolution 19

 Level 1: A Level 1 organization wants to gain knowledge
Knowledge of some of its rules. Such an organization
separates the business rules from other kinds of
business artifacts or requirement types. To
achieve this separation, a Level 1 organization
captures the rules in a simple manner on a
project-by-project basis, often involving only
minimal investment in new software and
organizational roles. Typically, rules are captured
as free-form rule statements, stored in
documents, spreadsheets, simple extensions to
modeling or requirements tools, or a relational
database that has room for rule-related
metadata. Business people know where to find
the documented rules and are, therefore, able to
find out where those rules are executing in the
business processes and systems. This minimal
traceability can lead to a shorter change cycle
than is likely at Level 0, where the rules remain
buried.

At Level 1, because rules are separated simply

but without a lot of rigor, they take on the
characteristics of a new kind of non-rigorous
business or system requirement. Therefore, as
with other kinds of requirements, typically in
Level 1 organizations, business analysts
interview business experts about objectives,
requirements, and source documents. The
business analysts (with some technical skills)
write the rules but technical people are still
needed to produce automated rules. The
business experts provide input and review the
output, but do not play the direct role of creating
the rule statements for the source rule repository.

As such, a Level 1 organization does not apply

much rigor in its Business Rules Approach. True
agility is in its infancy at Level 1, which is why
most organizations aim for Level 2.

20 Chapter 1: The Essential Business Rule Roadmap

Level 2: Agility A Level 2 organization aims for agility in its
business rules; thus, it seeks more rigor in
capturing and managing them. A Level 2
organization not only separates the rules from
other business and technical assets; it does so
with a well-defined rule authoring process. This
process starts with authoring rules or changing
rules, gaining business approval for them,
analyzing them, testing them, and putting them
into production (if automated). Structured
methods, parsed rule syntax or intelligent
parsers, and manual analysis of rule groups (for
correctness, completeness, etc.) are possible. A
Level 2 organization or project is well-positioned
to take advantage of BRMS deployment because
rules are expressed in a more rigorous form,
closer to that needed for automation and for
automated rule analysis (available through
BRMS). To achieve maximum agility, a Level 2
organization requires traceability from changing
rules to other business and system artifacts.
Thus, Level 2 requires separation and
traceability of business rules to support business
and technical agility.

Organizations aiming for Level 2 store these

rules in a more sophisticated source rule
repository, used by business and technical
people. The source rule repository also captures
standard terms and related reusable rule
clauses, enabling more robust rule reporting and
analysis. Rule related roles are defined.
Project-level rule stewardship exists. Typically, a
BRMS is used for some automated rules.

The transition to Level 2 involves adding the

authoring, validating, and analyzing of rules with
an underlying semantic model. In some Level 2
organizations, business analysts who are not so
technically oriented may author the
business-friendly form of a rule, especially if the

The Business Rule Revolution 21

 source rule repository is one that is easy to use.
Still, technically-oriented business analysts
usually write the more formal form while
technical people convert these into an
automated form. The responsibility for creating
business rules is shared by business analysts
and technical people.

Tomorrow’s Leaders: RMM

Levels 3, 4, 5

Level 3: An organization aiming for RMM Level 3 seeks

Consistency consistency among its rules and alignment of
and Alignment them to current and changing objectives.
Therefore, an RMM Level 3 organization seeks
business rule governance across projects,
systems, and perhaps business unit boundaries.

Such an organization identifies business-driven

benefits for standardizing or sharing business
rule techniques and even automated business
rule services across projects. These
organizations typically establish a Business
Rules Center of Excellence that endorses a
standard business rules methodology.
Sometimes multiple BRMSs are deployed, and
common business rules techniques, standards,
and roles are shared across BRMSs, when
appropriate.

The transition to RMM Level 3 is extremely

significant as it means cross-organizational rule
governance as well as more sophisticated
source rule repository support. It implies
organizational change and collaboration, and
brings with it some of the greatest business rule
benefits.

22 Chapter 1: The Essential Business Rule Roadmap

 Level 3 introduces automated rule analysis and
simulation capabilities. This means that the
translation from the business-friendly form to an
executable version is either prompted by
intelligent software or automatic in some manner.
In this environment, business analysts or even
business experts are able to author, change, and
test rules without relying on technical people to
bridge the gap. Usually, technical people put the
resulting rules in production.

Level 4: An organization at RMM Level 4 sees business

Predictions rules as predictions for future success.
Business people or analysts hypothesize about
future events to which they wish to respond in a
carefully pre-calculated manner. Business
leaders or analysts craft different rule sets, test,
simulate and compare predictions, and have
these rule sets ready-and-waiting for deployment
in anticipation of related threats and
opportunities. These people craft business rules
to react to such events and predict the business
impact of rule changes on the client base,
revenue, profit, and staff levels.

Level 4 opens up a whole new world. A Level 4

organization supports a variety of tools for
capturing and analyzing rules and with metrics
against which desired impact of rules on the
business are managed. Business analysts or
business experts define their destination via
metrics and then interactively craft the rules by
which they hope to arrive there. With tools and
metrics at hand, business analysts or business
experts can now proceed confidently from
understanding future business objectives to
simulating rules within a future context. Again,
usually technical people put such rules into
production, when needed.

The Business Rule Revolution 23

 Level 5: An organization aiming at RMM Level 5
Stewardship embraces the full stewardship of business rules
for refining and re-inventing itself as necessary.
The difference between Level 4 and 5 is that
Level 4 aims at immediate or short-term futures,
whereas Level 5 looks to a variety of longer-term
futures. It represents a world of anticipation and
planned reaction while hitting the ultimate goal of
agility. A Level 5 organization is not satisfied in
just being fast, but plans on being first. A Level 5
organization defines various futures as the
organizations wishes them to play out before
they happen!

24 Chapter 1: The Essential Business Rule Roadmap

 The characteristics of each level of the RMM are
summarized below.

Table 1: Culture and Capabilities for Each

RMM Level

RMM Use of Rules Primary Goal Comments

Level of RMM Level

1 Re-orient or Knowledge • Rules in business language

Re-discover of Rules • Rules tied to process models or use cases
(existing rules)
• Rules traced to systems implementation
• Rules stored in spreadsheets
2 Re-act Agility of Rules • Rules in formal form possibly with rule
(to change) authoring software
• Glossary of terms tied to rules
• Rules analyzable
• Standard rule reports
• Source rule repository with extensive
traceability of rules to rule metadata,
process models, object models, etc
• Rules in agile technology (BRMS)
3 Re-align Consistency • Rule sets assigned to business metrics
(with objectives) and Alignment • Rule sets shared as services across
of Rules processes and systems
• Business Rules Center of Excellence
established
• Possibly more than one BRMS
• Standard methodology, templates, etc
4 Re-envision Future • Potential events identified
(short-term Predictions • Potential rules simulated
futures) with Rules • Revenue, profit, people differences
estimated
• Rules recast according to analysis

5 Re-invent Full • Rule stewards identified

(longer-term Stewardship • Fast, first to define and respond
future) with Rules
• Ever-changing organization

The Business Rule Revolution 25

 The Rule Maturity Model and
the Changing Relationship
between Business and IT
Each higher level of the RMM, because there is
more rigor in the methods and more
sophistication in the software, offers the
opportunity to re-shape the relationship between
business and technical people. To understand
how this relationship can evolve, let’s first
understand the basics of the business rule life
cycle, which can provide a much shorter change
cycle.

The concept of a business rule life cycle is new

and it applies to all RMM Levels, except Level 0.
In fact, for RMM Levels 1 through 5, the business
rule life cycle is much the same. It usually
consists of the following tasks or activities:

1. Document business objectives or

requirements initially or requiring change.
2. Document business policies supporting the
objective or requirement.
3. Identify source materials for underlying rules.
4. Discover and author rules in simple,
business-friendly, natural language form (with
glossary).
5. Author, validate, and analyze rules in rigorous,
formal form with a semantic model of the
underlying glossary.
6. Automate and test rules.
7. Simulate rules within a context.
8. Put rules into production.

A very significant difference among RMM Levels

involves the role of business versus technical
people in the business rule life cycle. At higher
RMM Levels, businesspeople are able to carry

26 Chapter 1: The Essential Business Rule Roadmap

 out more of the steps in the business rule life
cycle because there are methods, standards,
and software that enable them to do so with
minimal technical support.

What Happens
Next-Technology Predictions
in the Rule Maturity Model?
The incremental methodology and technology
requirements for each level of the RMM are
becoming well-known and widely accepted.
Practitioners use the RMM to prepare for future
technology advancements. Software vendors
use the RMM to deliver on the promise of the
Business Rules Approach.

Most recent advances include the interest in and

addition of some business rule management
support for non-technical users to BRMS
products. Another important trend is that of
Enterprise Decision Management (EDM), which
takes advantage of BRMS technology and
sometimes analytical models to improve
operational decisions. Per Cutter Consortium3,
“EDM should be considered as a way to extend
your organization's DW (data warehousing) and
BI (business intelligence) capabilities by
automating decisions through the use of
rule-based systems and analytic modeling
techniques."

For more insights into current technology trends

and visions, see Chapter 15.

3. Hall, Curt, “Enterprise Decision Management: Busi-

ness Intelligence Advisory Service,” Executive Report
volume 5, No. 6, Cutter Consortium

The Business Rule Revolution 27

 Summary and Future Vision
The RMM is a tested roadmap by which
organizations set realistic business rule
expectations and design a practical roadmap for
getting there. The RMM keeps an organization
grounded in a step-by-step Business Rules
Approach that is customized to target business
objectives. As such, the RMM is a guide for
matching desired or required business benefits
to the appropriate amount of investment in
managing business rules. The RMM assists in
defining the first steps in getting started while
keeping a longer-term vision in sight.

Through the RMM, the vision of the Business

Rules Approach will be realized:

To enable business leadership to take control

of the guiding levers of the enterprise, and
enable technology to match the rate of
business change.

References
1. von Halle, Barbara, Business Rules Applied
(2002: John Wiley & Sons, New York)
2. Hall, Curt, “Enterprise Decision Management:
Business Intelligence Advisory Service,”
Executive Report volume 5, No. 6, Cutter
Consortium

28 Chapter 1: The Essential Business Rule Roadmap

 A u t h o r s

Contributing Authors
Contributors of this edition of the Business Rule
Revolution, in alphabetical order, are:

May Abraham is the founder of a management

consulting firm, Global Knowledge Architects,
focused on helping companies manage and
implement their core business knowledge using
a Business Rules Approach and structured
methodologies. May is a senior Knowledge
manager and has more than fifteen years of
experience in the knowledge management areas
including business rules, geographic information
systems, business analytics and decision
support systems. In her former job at AIG as
Director, knowledge management, she guided
many strategic business rules projects and has
successfully established enterprise wide
methodologies and implementations. May has a
Masters degree in Mathematics from Annamalai
University, India.

Michael Beck is President of Organization

Solutions Inc., and a business executive and
senior management consultant with over
twenty-five years’ experience in both consulting
and line management in commercial and
government positions. His broad experience
includes strategic planning, business
reengineering; requirements development and
management, business rules methodology, and
management process development. Michael has
applied his knowledge and experience to the
modernization of tax administration systems in
both federal and state governments.

The Business Rule Revolution 29

 Larry Goldberg is Managing Partner of
Knowledge Partners, Inc., specializing in
business strategy and architecture. Larry has
over thirty years of experience in
entrepreneurship on three continents—Africa,
Europe and North America. In the last twenty
three years his focus has been in creating
rules-based technologies and applications. He
has sponsored and played a primary
architectural role in Business Rules
Management Systems, and business
rules-based commercial software applications in
healthcare, supply chain, property and casualty
insurance, and taxation regulation. Prior to
joining Knowledge Partners, Inc. in 2005 as
Managing Partner, he sold his company,
PowerFlex Software, to Sapiens Americas, Inc.,
in 1999, becoming a Senior Vice President of
Sapiens.

Barbara von Halle is the Founder and Managing

Partner of Knowledge Partners Inc. As a
recognized leader in today’s Business Rules
Approach, Barbara led the development of the
best-selling Business Rules methodology book
(Business Rules Applied, 2002: John Wiley &
Sons), the KPI STEP™ licensed product of
Business Rules Management methods and
tools, the KPI RMM™, and a proven approach for
excavating rules from code. As a Business Rules
pioneer, Barbara received the Outstanding
Individual Achievement Award from the
International Data Management Association.
She has earned a bachelor’s degree in
mathematics and an master’s degree in
computer science with an electrical engineering
focus.

Neal McWhorter is a Principal at Enterprise

Agility. Neal helps organizations transform their
business goals into business solutions. He has

30 Authors
 worked with numerous large organizations to
help them realize their goals of achieving greater
business agility by helping them adopt a
business engineering approach. The Enterprise
Agility Business Engineering approach allows an
organization's business process and rules to
bridge the business/IT divide and become the
actual implementation on which the business
operates.

Jordan Masanga is IT Quality Assurance

Manager and Technology Officer of Oregon
Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS).
Jordan has directed OPERS in implementing QA
best practices, IBM Rational Unified Process®
(RUP®), business process management
initiatives, and automated workflow for over
three years. He has over eighteen years’
experience in information and high technology,
specifically software development and systems
integration. He was previously a Vice President
and Director of Engineering, Quality and Process
of ADC Telecommunications, where he managed
a division with five distributed international
offices.

Art Moore is a Managing Partner of Clear

Systems LLC. Art has over twenty years of IT
experience, from systems development to IT
strategic planning and practice management. He
has focused extensively on assisting large
projects and organizations to establish and
integrate business rule-related system
specification and development methods,
technology, and management tools and
processes in their total business systems
development and management context. Mr.
Moore is a co-author of Barbara von Halle’s last
book, Business Rules Applied (2002: John Wiley
& Sons).

The Business Rule Revolution 31

 Linda Nieporent is BRMS Product Manager at
ILOG, Inc. Linda has over ten years of IT
experience, the last six focused on business
rules, both from a business user perspective and
an IT implementation perspective. Ms. Nieporent
is a co-author of Barbara von Halle’s last book,
Business Rules Applied (2002: John Wiley &
Sons). As an active proponent of business rules
practices, she has written articles and presented
on business rules-related topics at user groups
and industry conferences.

John Semmel is Designer and Developer of

Rating and Quoting Applications at Aetna. John
has spent more than twenty-eight years in IT, the
last ten at Aetna where he spent four years
working with business rules. He also spent
several years at EDS on a team that developed
a mainframe-based, rules-driven rating and
underwriting application in the late 1980’s to
early 1990’s.

Brian Stucky is Vice President of Business Rule

Solutions at InScope Solutions, Inc. Brian has
nearly two decades of experience designing and
implementing business rule systems and directs
the company’s business rule practice area. Prior
to joining InScope Solutions, Brian served as the
Enterprise Rule Steward at Freddie Mac where
he set the business and technology strategy for
business rule development across the
corporation. Brian also co-founded two
companies that specialized in the design and
implementation of intelligent systems.

James Taylor is Vice President of Enterprise

Decision Management (EDM) at Fair Isaac
Corporation. James is widely recognized as a
leading proponent of the Enterprise Decision
Management approach that uses business rules
and predictive analytics to deliver excellence in

32 Authors
 operational decision making. James has
experience in all aspects of software
development. He previously worked at a start-up,
in PeopleSoft’s R&D group and at Ernst and
Young. He writes and speaks extensively on
EDM and is often quoted and interviewed.

Gene Weng is Business Rule Lead in a major

American financial service company. Gene also
worked as an IT architect for Perot Systems. He
holds a master's degree in mathematics from the
University of Science and Technology, Beijing,
and a master's degree in computer science from
the University of Oregon.

Larry Ward is Quality Assurance Project

Manager at Oregon Public Employees
Retirement Systems. Larry has over forty years’
experience in systems analysis and design,
industrial engineering, and QA, including over
ten years’ Business Rules Approach experience.
He is working on a major systems conversion
project that implements BPM at OPERS and
uses the OPERS Business Rules Approach.
Larry designed the process to apply a Business
Rules Approach at OPERS and was the project
coordinator for five years; he managed IBM®
Rational® RequisitePro® and ClearCase®
database repositories, requirements, and
content for over five years, and assisted in
developing tools and processes to update the
rule databases. He has earned a bachelor’s
degree in business and management, a master’s
degree in management, and a Juris Doctor
degree.

John A. Zachman is CEO of Zachman Institute

for Framework Advancement, Chairman of the
Board of Zachman Framework Associates, and
operator of Zachman International. John is
well-known as the originator of the “Framework

The Business Rule Revolution 33

 for Enterprise Architecture” which has received
broad acceptance around the world as an
integrative framework, or “periodic table," of
descriptive representations for Enterprises. He is
also known for his early contributions to IBM’s
Information Strategy methodology (Business
Systems Planning) as well as to their executive
team planning techniques (Intensive Planning).
John serves on the Executive Council for
Information Management and Technology of the
United States General Accounting Office. He is a
Fellow for the College of Business Administration
of the University of North Texas; he serves on the
Advisory Board for the Data Resource
Management Program at the University of
Washington and on the Advisory Board of the
Data Administration Management Association
International (DAMA-I), from whom he won the
2002 Lifetime Achievement Award. He was
awarded the 2004 Oakland University Applied
Technology in Business (ATIB) Award for IS
Excellence and Innovation. He is the author of
the eBook The Zachman Framework for
Enterprise Architecture: A Primer on Enterprise
Engineering and Manufacturing.

34 Authors