[epf-dev] Agile Business Rule Plugin

["Jerome Boyer" <jboyer@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi,
A quick introduction of myself, I'm a Technical Director at ILOG Inc, Sunnyvale, CA, and some years ago I created the Professional Service delivery methodology (Called ISIS) that is used today within the company. One of a major piece of ISIS is a methodology to develop application using business rule. Recently I was in contact with Ricardo as I would like to contribute to EPF

by providing an agile Business Rule Development methodology as an EPF plugin. So he told me to write to this email list.

 

ILOG is using EPF since one year and half for managing the content of ISIS. Today ILOG has accepted my proposition to provide the Agile Business Rule Development plugin to Eclipse foundation, and is in agreement with Eclipse license agreement.

I can share with you the current published version of this plugin if needed. It is based on epf1.2 and reuse- extend elements of OpenUP.
I would like to know what are the steps to deploy this plugin within epf dev environment, as XP or Scrum did already. Most of the content is already here and we can commit in your CVS before the end of September, so that people can download it.

 

If you have questions, comments, or needs for more information please feel free to contact me.

 

Here is some details of the content:
 
The Agile Business Rule Development plugin presents a pragmatic approach for the development of a Business Rule Application
using Rule Engine technology like ILOG JRules, Rule for .Net or other any other Rule Engine on the market.

 

A rule set is a piece of software which is executed by a rule engine. Integrated in a business application it implements a
sub set of the business logic. This logic is externalized from the traditional code and can change in the future, and be
maintained by business analysts.
 
As any software component, a rule set follows the same standard development patterns and methodology as other components.
But by externalizing part of the business logic, the business owners are creating flexible business policies which represent
competitive advantage and are considered as real asset of the company.  As important element of the business decision,
the business rules need strong management processes and tools to support their life cycle. An enterprise Business Rule Management
 System (BRMS) provides solutions to make this management more efficient, both for developers and for the business users of
the applications.

 

The Agile Business Rule Development methodology is applying the Agile Alliance manifesto as developing a rule set enforces strongly the Agile values:
• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools - the rule discovery, analysis and validation force to have a strong communication between developer and Subject Matter Expert. Processes are defined as light as possible.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation. The proposed rule set development done per iteration, with its validation step shows to the business user and other stakeholders that a working rule set has much business value than a rule description manual.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. The Subject Matter Expert who is defining the business policies and the business rules is strongly involved in the development process. He is the customer, collocated with the development team.
• Responding to change over following a plan. Business Rules are changing, quicker than standard software, this is one of the big values of a BRMS, so the methodology to support the rule set development has to define the activities, processes and work products to support those changes.
The Agile Business Rule Development plug in addresses in more detail the following goals:
• To separate rules as a manageable artifact using discovery, analysis and authoring activities and work products
• To trace rules during their full life cycle from requirement to deployment
• To link rules to business context and motivation
• To develop the rule description using business term and high level rule language
• To prepare the logical data model for the rule engine (The concept of Business Object Model in ILOG JRules) 
• To prepare the Rule set implementation and deployment as decision services
• To articulate the rule governance processes

 

There are two strong concepts that will apply to rule set development:
• The unforgiving honesty of working rules
• The effectiveness of people working together with goodwill (the business user and the development team).

The Agile Business Rule Development methodology details all the different activities to develop a rule set, from rule discovery to rule set deployment and maintenance. We can group the set of activities into five groups. Those groups will be used to build an iterative approach to the development:

·                     Rule Discovery

·                     Rule Analysis

·                     Rule Authoring

·                     Rule Validation

·                     Rule Deployment

The following diagram is presenting how the five group of activities can be executed in a process flow using back loops to support short iterations. The rule set will cook following those cycles.

 

Figure 1 Rule Set Development Life Cycle

 

 

 

Jerome Boyer 

Semiconductor Business Division -  Services Senior Director -

1195 West Fremont Avenue

Sunnyvale, CA  94087-3832 USA

"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future" Neils Bohr

Mobile 650 642 6852 - Office  408 991 7195