🚫Business Rule Engine may be different from what you think of it or expect it to be!
Fundamentally, a BRE or Business Rule Engine is a computer software component that allows the execution of #BusinessRules. However, different teams and functions have widely different expectations from a Business Rules Engine.
💢The expectations of the software development team are very different from the expectations of SME and operation teams.
🔸Software development teams use the component as part of the design and architecture to ensure that codes written for business rules can be managed centrally, are fairly isolated, and can be tested easily.
🔸Subject matter experts and operation teams want to create, test, and deploy business rules themselves. They want to own and control the business rules lifecycle.
So, if we compare these two definitions and expectations, there are some overlaps, but it is not quite a lot:
🔸The software development team can use any user interface and any metadata (JSON, XML, etc.), and often, the rules that are built using a BRE with the software development team are still in the programming languages they actually had built the system.
🔸Subject Matter Experts and operation teams: They need a non-technical user interface to build simple and complex business rules, test and debug them, and even deploy and operationalize them.
⚠️Keep in mind that not only rules change, but also the environment in which they operate, e.g., data structure changes, field changes, data sources changes, new data points are needed, new systems are integrated, new processes are kicked off, etc. These changing environments, in turn, make the distinction between what these two groups want significantly far apart.
The Business Rule Engine (BRE) is just a component but you need a full set of functionality to bridge the gap between these two group's expectations:
1️⃣ An easy-to-use user interface for the non-technical team, but also flexible for IT and development teams to build sophisticated rules and decisions. Ideally, multiple techniques and options for modeling business rules are needed.
2️⃣ A centralized rules repository that can easily be integrated into IT systems, change management, and CI/CD. It is also easy for non-technical people to contribute to the overall project without adding the overhead of transferring rules from one repository and form to another.
3️⃣ Robust data connectivity, data processing, and on-the-fly data operations allow both groups to integrate new and changing data sources without changing the processes and IT systems codebase.
4️⃣ An easy quality assurance for testing and debugging allows step through every rule one-by-obe and gives transparency on how the rules are executed
5️⃣ Last but not least, a set of easy-to-use tools for deployment to on-pre and cloud for non-technical team members, yet powerful for IT to make DevOps works a piece of cake!
#agile #softwaredevelopment #programming #code
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Published June 18th, 2024 at 07:30 am
