You can think of the Business Rules Movement as the catalyst that makes a bunch of other techniques and technologies finally gel. On the business side there’s been the movement towards formalized process modeling with the associated entity modeling typical of the IDEF 1.x style approach; and a focus on metrics-based process improvement particularly via TQM and Six Sigma. On the IT side there been the whole Business Process Management framework implementation with the associated Business Process Monitoring pieces to provide streams of real-time metrics.

The Business Rules movement has begun the transition from being a niche approach to entering the mainstream of organizations’ project techniques. Where once organizations saw only business processes and requirements, they now also see business rules. In fact, it’s tempting to see everything as business rules. In the midst of the movement’s first encounter with fame and fortune, it’s a good time to ask what the real value proposition is for business rules and whether everything that is potentially a rule should be treated as a business rule.

While the days of internet time may have passed us by, the shift in focus to competition based upon the speed of innovation is here to stay. Organizations know that in the new business model, where work can be sent anywhere in the world to the low-cost provider, that one of the key competitive advantages they have is the ability to differentiate themselves with unique offerings. But even these new offerings have a shelf-life as other firms move to quickly imitate innovations.

In many organizations today there exists a communication gap between the business community and the IT organization that is so commonplace that its existence is virtually taken for granted. This gap exacts a heavy toll on an organization by preventing business domain experts from knowing how their business is really working.

For many organizations, business rules represent their core differentiating offerings. This is particularly true in industries where the product offering is actually a service that is implemented by complex software systems. The financial services industry, such as banking, insurance, finance, loan processing and credit cards, is a prime example of a domain (or many domains) where business rules take center stage and are the MVPs of differentiation.