Writing Effective Business Rules

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. The world of rules

1.1 What is a business rule?

1.2 Why rules are important

1.3 Best practice rule management

1.4 The nature of the problem

1.5 The solutions

1.6 Summary

Chapter 2. How rules work

2.1 Operative rules

2.2 Definitional (structural) rules

2.3 Normative, prescriptive, and descriptive rules

2.4 Business processes

2.5 Rules in user interfaces

2.6 Rules governing electronic messages

2.7 Rules ensuring database integrity

2.8 Human activities other than business processes

2.9 Summary

Chapter 3. A brief history of rules

3.1 Implementing rules

3.2 Documenting rules

3.3 Recent developments

3.4 Summary

Chapter 4. Types of rules

4.1 Rules governing the physical world

4.2 Legislation and regulations

4.3 Organizational constructs

4.4 Rules governing the collection and recording of data

4.5 Taking account of the physical world in data rules

4.6 Rules governing other business processes

4.7 Rules governing which parties can perform business processes

4.8 Rules governing human activities other than business processes

4.9 A complete taxonomy of rules

4.10 Summary

Chapter 5. The building blocks of natural language rule statements

5.1 Nouns

5.2 Proper names

5.3 Verbs

5.4 Determiners

5.5 Adjectives

5.6 Prepositions

5.7 Conjunctions

5.8 Pronouns

5.9 Literals

5.10 The three uses of ‘that’

5.11 Summary

Chapter 6. Fact models

6.1 Fact models: an overview

6.2 Terms and names

6.3 Fact types

6.4 Building a fact model

6.5 Using a fact model for other aspects of system specification

6.6 Summary

Chapter 7. How to write quality natural language rule statements

7.1 Typography and punctuation conventions in rule statements

7.2 Rule statement anatomy

7.3 Why templates?

7.4 Rule statement quality

7.5 Summary

Chapter 8. An end-to-end rule management methodology

8.1 Rule discovery

8.2 Analyzing rules

8.3 Developing the rule statement vocabulary

8.4 Documenting rules

8.5 Rule book quality assurance

8.6 Rule publication

8.7 Rule book and fact model maintenance

8.8 Summary

Chapter 9. Rule statement templates and subtemplates

9.1 Using the templates to write rule statements

9.2 Definitional rules

9.3 Data rules

9.4 Activity rules

9.5 Party rules

9.6 Summary

Glossary

Index