Business Rules in the Process Age

In a previous article “Integrated Business Management in the Process Age”, I discussed the dawn of the process age which follows on the Information age. In that article I stated that an organisation’s maturity in the Process Age can be plotted against its ability to utilise and manage the five basic capabilities for high performance: People, Guidance, Processes, Information and Resources.

The Process and Information capabilities were discussed in subsequent articles. I want to delve deeper into the concept of Guidance, which is the foundation of the organisation, and encapsulates the motivation and the business rules of an organisation. It is derived from the vision, mission, strategy, goals and objectives, and influenced by internal and external influences. It guides, constrains, controls and ensures fairness for all in the organisation. The Guidance also determines what services the organisation will provide to achieve its vision. Guidance enforces compliance through its application as governance.

Although process thinking – with all its nuances of outside-in, inside-out and continual improvement – will set organisations apart from each other, it is how the organisation manages its business rules that will offer sustainability through the different phases of the organisation’s transformation. The guidance of the organisation (as stated and enforced in its business rules) is the one capability that will ensure that all the efforts of the organisation are geared towards the improved state.

Business rules have these basic uses:

1. To control: specifies boundaries and parameters for constraint and compliance.
2. To guide: specifies the best behaviour for accomplishing work and the most effective decision in certain scenarios.
3. To measure: specifies the controls that are required to show compliance to a standard or to reach a level of maturity.
4. To decide: different business rules in alternative scenarios will support the decision on the best scenario. Decisions must never be documented in the absence of business rules as they are the terms and facts that support the decision.

Business Rules can be grouped as follow:

1. Legal / government / industry / regulatory rules: all the rules that are enforced on the organisation from parties or sources outside the organisation. These are mostly translated into general policies and compliance rules.
2. Internal rules: the rules that the organisation imposes on itself. These will translate into organisation specific policies and product and service rules.
3. Successful Customer Outcomes: the rules associated with the interaction with the customer and the services delivered to the customer. These will be taken into the design and development of the business services and products.

How these different rules are implemented can be summarised as follow:

1. Business Control: The rules that will govern the utilisation of services (and its associated products) in bringing forth the desired successful customer outcomes. These controls will govern how the basic capabilities of the organisation are utilised in the delivery of services to the customer as well as internal services.
2. Business Design: The rules that will govern the design of services and associated products. These rules will specify the outcomes for services and how they will be attained and managed. They include the measures and parameters that must be designed into the service or product to facilitate successful process execution.
3. Operational Rule: These are the operational rules that apply during the execution of processes that result in services being delivered to a customer (whether internal or external). These rules apply to people and processes as well the information, technology and other resources used in activities.

The implementation of rules specifies the parameters and conditions within which they must operate:

1. Service Rules: Specifies the objective and outcome of a service. It aligns the service to the value chain and the strategic intent of the service. It specifies the measures for successful outcomes of the service.
2. Product Rules: Specifies the parameters, boundaries and specific use of products. It relates each product to the service it is associated with. It also specifies the rules and measures for quality as well as the generic attributes product categories must demonstrate. Remember: These are not product or business requirements, but the rules that apply to the context within which the product must exist.
3. Process Rules: Specifies the purpose and outcomes of the process. It determines the logical gates in the process and the decision sets to be used to validate the flow of work and the successful completion of activities. It specifies the measures that will be used to monitor and measure the process to facilitate process management, improvement and optimisation and decision making.
4. Resource Rules: Specifies the rules associated with the utilisation of resources in a process. Again, these are not the resource requirements, but rather the controls and parameters that will guide the use of the resource. These will also include measures for the effective and efficient usage of resources and to determine non-usage.
5. Data Rules: Specifies the rules that apply to data and data attributes. They also specify how information and knowledge is derived from the use of data and how these are combined to form decisions.

The attached figure illustrates the important shaping influence of guidance and how guidance is implemented in the organisation and monitored via the delivered service.

The successful application of Business Rules in the Process Age will result in:

• The design of services and processes being focussed on successful customer outcomes.
• Organisations being able to dynamically change to adapt to a dynamically changing environment.
• The policies and decisions of the organisation being incorporated into the operation of the business.
• Effective enterprise decision management that will build the knowledge and wisdom of the organisation to guide it into the future.