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.

Extends: Business Analyst

Role Sets: Agile Rules Roles

Relationships


Additionally Performs	Build Rule Project Structure Synchronize Data Model Develop Rules Develop Unit Tests Get SME Feedback Execute Rule Set Functional Tests
Modifies	Rule Discovery Roadmap Rule Discovery Workshop Itinerary Decision Point Table Business Terms Glossary Logical Data Model Rule Description Document Rule Repository Rule Report

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

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.

This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the
Eclipse Public License v1.0 which accompanies this distribution.