Agile Business Rule Development: Process, Architecture, and JRules Examples [Hardcover]

Jérôme Boyer (Author), Hafedh Mili (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 2011 | ISBN-10: 3642190405 | ISBN-13: 978-3642190407 | Edition: 2011

Business rules are everywhere. Every enterprise process, task, activity, or function is governed by rules. However, some of these rules are implicit and thus poorly enforced, others are written but not enforced, and still others are perhaps poorly written and obscurely enforced. The business rule approach looks for ways to elicit, communicate, and manage business rules in a way that all stakeholders can understand, and to enforce them within the IT infrastructure in a way that supports their traceability and facilitates their maintenance. Boyer and Mili will help you to adopt the business rules approach effectively. While most business rule development methodologies put a heavy emphasis on up-front business modeling and analysis, agile business rule development (ABRD) as introduced in this book is incremental, iterative, and test-driven. Rather than spending weeks discovering and analyzing rules for a complete business function, ABRD puts the emphasis on producing executable, tested rule sets early in the project without jeopardizing the quality, longevity, and maintainability of the end result. The authors’ presentation covers all four aspects required for a successful application of the business rules approach: (1) foundations, to understand what business rules are (and are not) and what they can do for you; (2) methodology, to understand how to apply the business rules approach; (3) architecture, to understand how rule automation impacts your application; (4) implementation, to actually deliver the technical solution within the context of a particular business rule management system (BRMS). Throughout the book, the authors use an insurance case study that deals with claim processing. Boyer and Mili cater to different audiences: Project managers will find a pragmatic, proven methodology for delivering and maintaining business rule applications. Business analysts and rule authors will benefit from guidelines and best practices for rule discovery and analysis. Application architects and software developers will appreciate an exploration of the design space for business rule applications, proven architectural and design patterns, and coding guidelines for using JRules.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[...] Quite possibly this will be the most important and comprehensive book you will ever read on the topic of business rules. [...] If you plan to use business rules to extend and manage the decisions in your operational environment, something I highly recommend, this book will show you how to use an agile approach to do so." - Rob High, Jr., IBM Fellow, IBM SOA Foundation, Chief Architect

From the Back Cover

Business rules are everywhere. Every enterprise process, task, activity, or function is governed by rules. However, some of these rules are implicit and thus poorly enforced, others are written but not enforced, and still others are perhaps poorly written and obscurely enforced. The business rule approach looks for ways to elicit, communicate, and manage business rules in a way that all stakeholders can understand, and to enforce them within the IT infrastructure in a way that supports their traceability and facilitates their maintenance. Boyer and Mili will help you to adopt the business rules approach effectively. While most business rule development methodologies put a heavy emphasis on up-front business modeling and analysis, agile business rule development (ABRD) as introduced in this book is incremental, iterative, and test-driven. Rather than spending weeks discovering and analyzing rules for a complete business function, ABRD puts the emphasis on producing executable, tested rule sets early in the project without jeopardizing the quality, longevity, and maintainability of the end result. The authors’ presentation covers all four aspects required for a successful application of the business rules approach: (1) foundations, to understand what business rules are (and are not) and what they can do for you; (2) methodology, to understand how to apply the business rules approach; (3) architecture, to understand how rule automation impacts your application; (4) implementation, to actually deliver the technical solution within the context of a particular business rule management system (BRMS). Throughout the book, the authors use an insurance case study that deals with claim processing. Boyer and Mili cater to different audiences: Project managers will find a pragmatic, proven methodology for delivering and maintaining business rule applications. Business analysts and rule authors will benefit from guidelines and best practices for rule discovery and analysis. Application architects and software developers will appreciate an exploration of the design space for business rule applications, proven architectural and design patterns, and coding guidelines for using JRules.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 594 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 2011 edition (April 6, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3642190405
• ISBN-13: 978-3642190407
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.3 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #880,542 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #68 in Books > Computers & Technology > Business & Management > Project Management > Agile

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book on an agile approach to building agile systems October 4, 2011

By James Taylor

Format:Hardcover

Effective management of business rules must involve both business and IT organizations. There must be alignment and collaboration if the business rules are to be managed correctly. Indeed empowering this collaboration is the primary value of a business rules management system. Yet most systems development methodologies are predicated on a separation between the business and IT. These methodologies create artifacts and manage processes to try and minimize this separation but they take it for granted. To successfully adopt business rules and manage decisions an agile systems development approach specifically for business rules is required.

Jerome Boyer and Hafedh Mili have published a great book on Agile Business Rule Development. ABRD is unique in that it is an agile methodology that promotes iteration and the early use of a business rules management system. Focusing on incremental and iterative development it has been specifically developed to handle new artifacts like business rules, decision points and more. It applies the key tenets of the agile manifesto and takes advantage of the power of business rules management systems to deliver on those tenets. It shows how using a shared business rules definition allows you to value "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools". It prototypes early using these shared rule definitions to ensure "Working software over comprehensive documentation" It leverages the ability of non-technical business people to understand and even edit business rules to deliver "Customer collaboration over contract negotiation". Finally it relies on the faster update and deployment cycles of a business rules management system to ensure projects put "Responding to change over following a plan".

Some companies make the mistake of assuming that decision management and business rules can be adopted by an IT department without changing existing governance and development approaches. Others assume that they can handle business rules as part of modeling and managing business processes. In fact, new approaches and techniques are required. An agile approach combined with the use of business rules management systems for managing the logic in decision-making components has allowed the companies I work with to empower business users and analysts to collaborate effectively with their IT teams and even to control some of the logic themselves. Effective management of the decision logic has improved decision accuracy, compliance and consistency.

Companies that adopt a business rules management system and use it to manage decisions are more agile, better aligned and have systems and processes that are just plain smarter. ABRD has many important characteristics for such an organization: It treats business rules, and decisions, as separate artifacts; It links these artifacts to your business motivation and shows how they can be packaged up to deliver decision services, coherent decision-making components in a Service-Oriented Architecture; And it focuses on using this technology to get a core component up and running quickly so that it can be involved and continuously improved as you learn and as your business changes.

With this book, Jerome and Hafedh have written more than just a complete guide to ABRD. This book provides an introduction to business rules and to the ABRD methodology. It discusses key ABRD topics like rule harvesting (from elicitation to analysis) and rule prototyping and design. It outlines key design patterns and covers critical issues in everything from rule authoring to deployment and testing. Rule performance, rule governance and detailed descriptions of how to do all this with IBM's business rules management system round out a thorough and complete book.

If you plan to use business rules to extend and manage the decisions in your operational environment, something I highly recommend, this book will show you how to use an agile approach to do so.

DISCLOSURE: I wrote a foreword for this book

5.0 out of 5 stars Must have book December 22, 2012

By Samji

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book not only teaches the internals of the most popular Rules Application Development tools in the market the "ILOG JRules" but also about the methodology how to apply in in real day to day work environment. I recommend this book for anyone who are practicing the Decision Management.