Role: Rule Analyst
The Rule Analyst is responsible for putting in place the rule approach and the rule stewardship. He is reponsible for the execution of the rule management process, and helps extract the business rules.
Relationships
Performs:Responsible for:
Additionally Performs:Modifies:
Main Description

A Rule Analyst is a special business analyst with a strong knowledge of how a business rule application runs. He knows how a rule engine works, how to design a logical data model, how to do the rule discovery and analysis activities.


In rule-based project his direct involvement includes at least the following activities

  • Create rule templates for rule authors to use
  • Analyze rules for completeness, correctness, optimization (from a logical, not performance, perspective)
  • Identify the use of rules in processes that implement business policies
  •  Ensure the quality of the business rules
  •  Ensure that consistent terminology is used in the business rules in order to build a common vocabulary and a domain data model
  • Analyze business rules to identify conflicts, redundancies
  • Ensure consistency of business rules across functions, geographies and systems
  • Conduct impact analysis for revision or replacement of business rules
  • Integrate new or revised rules into existing rule set
  • Make recommendations for business rule changes based on business knowledge
  • Facilitate resolution of business rules issues
  • Act as consultant for the project team
  • Act as a liaison between business and IT
Properties
Multiple Occurrences
Optional
PlannedYes
Staffing
Skills

An analyst needs the following knowledge, skills, and abilities:

  • Expertise in identifying and understanding problems and opportunities
  • Ability to articulate the needs that are associated with the key problem to be solved or opportunity to be realized
  • Ability to collaborate effectively with the extended team through collaborative working sessions, workshops, JAD sessions and other techniques.
  • Good communication skills, verbally and in writing
  • Knowledge of the business and technology domains or the ability to quickly absorb and understand such information

Assignment Approaches

This role can be assigned in the following ways:

  • On small, agile teams this role is often shared among several team members that also perform other roles.  See Guideline: Self Organize Work Assignments and Guideline: Staffing a Project for more information on this approach.
  • One (or more) team member(s) performs this role exclusively. This commonly adopted approach is suitable for complex requirements that are difficult to gather.
  • One staff (or more) team member(s) performs both this role and the Tester role. This is a good option for smaller or resource-constrained test teams.