Meet the Authors: James Taylor and Jan Purchase, Real-World Decision Modeling with DMN

James is a Faculty Member of BPMInstitute.org and the CEO and a Principal Consultant of Decision Management Solutions. He is the leading expert in how to use business rules and analytic technology to build Decision Management Systems. James is passionate about using Decision Management Systems to help companies improve decision making and develop an agile, analytic and adaptive business. He provides strategic consulting to companies of all sizes, working with clients in all sectors to adopt decision making technology. James has spent the last 20 years developing approaches, tools, and platforms that others can use to build more effective information systems. He has led Decision Management efforts for leading companies in insurance, banking, health management, manufacturing, travel and telecommunications. James is the author of “Decision Management Systems: A practical guide to using business rules and predictive analytics” (IBM Press, 2011). He previously wrote Smart (Enough) Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions (Prentice Hall) with Neil Raden, and has contributed chapters on Decision Management to multiple books as well as many articles to magazines. He is currently working on a book projects related to decision modeling. Decision Management Solutions work with clients to improve their business by applying analytics and analytic technology to automate and improve decisions. Decision Management Solutions is a submitter of the Decision Model and Notation standard.

Jan Purchase has been working in investment banking for 19 years, the last 13 of which he has focused exclusively on the use of business decisions, decision modelling (TDM and DMN), business rules, business rule management systems (BRMS) and business process modelling. He is a founder of a company, Lux Magi Financial Rules (LMFR) specializing in delivering the benefits of all of these concepts to financial organizations, as well as providing training and mentoring in their use. All of LMFR's clients have benefited from the adoption of decision modelling; one international client initiative included a set of fourteen separate decision modelling projects trained and mentored by Dr Purchase. Jan has maintained a blog ‘Decision Management for Finance’ since 2010 highlighting the practical lessons learned from applying decision modelling and BRMS at scale and providing useful feedback to clients and vendor partners. He has published many white papers, hosted multiple webinars and chaired several public coaching sessions on the application of decision modelling and BRMS to problems in finance. Jan has been applying TDM and, more recently DMN, to finance and regulatory compliance projects since 2011. Jan is the author of "Real-World Decision Modeling with DMN" (2016) with James Taylor.