Discipline: Rule Analysis

The goal of this activity is to prepare the rules for the implementation. The rule analyst and the rule writer will analyze the rules discovered in a disjointed way into a complete and coherent set.

From the rule description, the glossary of business terms and may be from a first version of the logical data model (LDM), the discovery team needs to transform the rules using terms of the business object to elements that will be implemented by the rule writers. The rule analysis includes at least the following activities:

Transform Rules so that they are atomic, standalone elements, this is needed for understandability, and ease of implementation and maintenance. The rule should use well-defined terms. Those terms will serve to develop the future BOM.
Define Rule Schema, and understand underlying rule patterns, and eventually remove redundant rules, or resolve overlaps among rules
Determine Rule Implementation
Build Rule Projects structure, with in-out parameters, rule flow, rule packages structure and even different rule projects
Build Rule Business Object models as a view of the enterprise model but for the rule scope. Link it to the executable objects model
Prototype some rules to get end user feedback quicker
Synchronize with the data modeling team

A rule is atomic if it cannot be further decomposed without losing meaning.

Rule analysis does not deal with rule validation, this will be done later, nor it does not deal with rule optimization. One of the most difficult activity of the rule analysis is to resolve inconsistencies among rules and ensure completeness among rules. This will not be possible to complete a rule set in one iteration, but the analysis activity should address the questions of completeness and prepare for the future iteration.

It is also very important to start using the rule development IDE as soon as possible to understand how complex the rule and the object model are. This is when we implement rules that we are seeing real analysis issues. Implemented rule also help to come back to the business users with concrete cases, questions and issues.