- 1). Establish rules that govern terms or facts. Define rules for terms that have specific meaning for the business and indicate the specific context for this understanding. Include rules that document association (relationship) between terms.
- 2). Develop rules that describe facts that relate terms to each other. You can express these relationships in sentence structure, attributes or generalizations. For example, to say that only discount club members can purchase items within the warehouse is a business rule.
- 3). Define rules that identify limitations for action or behavior. Describe the dynamic conditions that exist within the business that are subject to constraints. For example, if alcoholic beverage sales are not permitted on Sunday, items within that category should be blocked from purchase transaction on those days. Include other parameters in the analysis such as time (i.e., between 2 and 4 p.m.), enablers, (i.e., only when a driver's license is presented) or executive (i.e., only when the supervisor enters an override code).
- 4). Document how knowledge in one area may be integrated or transformed into new or existing knowledge. Establish how facts in their native settings (base facts) will be stored, integrated with other facts and stored, integrated with a derived (calculated) fact and stored, or derived itself and integrated with other derived facts and stored. For example, how will the sales tax (derived) be applied to purchase items, if the amount varies for grocery, medical and alcoholic items?
- 5). Refrain from developing rules that govern or pertain to the behavior of people. Subjective or volatile rationale is inappropriate content for business rules.
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