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Understanding Business Process Rules
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by Joydip Kanjilal
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Introduction |
Business Process Rules addresses the need for improved
efficiency and increased flexibility of business processes of an enterprise.
This, integrated with Business Process Management Systems, can manage the complexity
and change of business processes in an enterprise seamlessly. They promote
operational agility, better responsiveness, and greater flexibility and
increased ROI for an enterprise.
This article presents Business Process Rules, Business
Process Rules Engine, the advantages, the benefits of integrating Business
Process Rules Engine into the Business Process Management Systems and
highlights how these cater to the increasing demand for automation of business
processes in an enterprise; making these business processes more flexible and
adaptable for future changes.
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Business Processes and Business Process Management Systems |
The Workflow Management Coalition (WFMC) defines a business
process as "A set of one or more linked procedures or activities which collectively
realize a business objective or policy goal, normally within the context of an
organizational structure defining functional roles and relationships." A
business process is actually, "a recipe for achieving a commercial result.
Each business process has inputs, method and outputs. The inputs are a
pre-requisite that must be in place before the method can be put into practice.
When the method is applied to the inputs then certain outputs will be
created."
A Business Process Management System is one that enables us
to define, automate, execute, manage and improve business process in an
enterprise. Find more on Business Process, Business Process Management and
Business Process Management Systems in my article at the following link: Business Process
Management: Bridging the Gap between Business and IT.
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Business Process Rules – A paradigm shift |
When we model a business process, rules are created and
associated with the business process itself. These are commonly known as
Business Process Rules. These are statements that govern the overall
functioning of the application’s business processes. They are defined by the
business people, can change frequently over time and are declarative. They define
the policies and procedures that govern how the business process of an
application would behave. Business Process Rules enhance productivity and
promote business process agility and its adaptability for future changes.
According to the Business Rules Group, “a business rule is a statement that
defines and constraints some business. It is intended to assert business
structure or to control or influence the behavior of the business. The business
rules which concern the project are atomic, that is, they cannot be broken down
further.”
The traditional business applications have their business
processes and business process rules embedded in the application’s code itself.
Hence, any change in the business rule would compel the developer to change the
application’s source code to facilitate these changes. If we need to change the
application’s business process rules owing to a change in the business process
of the application, it would be time consuming, error prone, critical and at
the same time tedious to change the application’s code, once again to
facilitate these business process changes.
This is where a Business Process Rules based approach comes in.
A Business Process Rules based approach is a paradigm shift from the
traditional way (embedding the business rules in the application’s code) of
dealing with business rules in an application. A Business Process Rules based
approach promotes isolation of the business rules of an application from its
code and, hence, promotes greater flexibility and adaptability for future
changes by reducing the downtime for implementing the changes to its business
logic. “It is a development methodology where the business rules are in a form
that is used by, but does not have to be embedded in, business process
management systems.”
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Advantages of a Business Process Rules based approach |
This business process rules based approach has a lot of
advantages.
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Ability to change the business process rules independent of the
business process of an application
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Reduces cost, risk and development time of an application
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Promotes agility, flexibility, manageability and adaptability of
the business processes
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The rules can be shared across processes and outside processes by
storing them in a centralized shared repository
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Business Process Rules Engine (BRE) and Business Process
Rules Management Systems (BRMS) |
A Business Rules Engine is one that executes and manages the
Business Rules. A typical business user is responsible for modeling the
business rules and the enterprise software architect would be responsible for
mapping and integrating the same into the application.
The advantages of using BREs are given below:
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Providing a centralized Business Rules repository that can be
shared by multiple applications
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Automation of the Business Rules of an application
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Promoting business process agility
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Components of Business Rules Engine |
Typically, a Business Rules Engine (BRE) consists of the
following components:
1.
Rules Editor: Used to design, validate and simulate the business rules
based on some predefined conditions using a user interface.
2.
Rules Repository: Used to store the business rules in a centralized
repository so that multiple applications can have access to these rules.
3.
Rules Engine: Used to execute the business rules designed using the
Rules Editor. These rules are read from the centralized rules repository.
4.
Rules Administration Component: Used to administer the business rules,
modify them and update the business rules repository if the business process
changes. Generally, the Rules Administrator is a web editor used for remote
administration of these business rules.
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Integrating Business Rules Engine with Business Process
Management Systems |
In contrast to the traditional business applications, a
Business Rules Engine facilitates the implementation of agile and adaptive
Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) by promoting an isolation of the
business rules of an application from the application’s code. Hence, at a later
point in time, if we intend to modify the business rules, the applications
logic would perform as usual without having to rewrite or change the
application’s source code.
Business Process Rules can be integrated with the Business
Process Editors that are used to design the Business Process Diagrams. The
Business Process Engine would execute the Business Processes and the Business
Process Rules Engine would read the business process rules (that form a part of
the business processes and are attached to them) from the rules repository and
execute them. Integrating the Business Process Rules Engine (BRE) with a
Business Process Management System (BPMS) promotes better process automation
and improves the agility of the BPMS as a whole. In sharp contrast, in the
traditional applications, the business rules based on which the application’s
business logic would function are embedded in the application’s code itself and
are much less flexible and adaptable for changes.
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References |
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Conclusion |
Business Process Rules specify the manner in which the
business process of an application would function. They form a part of the core
business logic of the applications and are important, if not critical, for an
enterprise to facilitate agility in their business processes; enabling them to
be adaptive for future changes. Applications today should be flexible and
adaptive to business process changes. This can only be ensured by adhering to a
declarative approach in the modeling of business processes. Business Rules are
now being used widely for their capability to make the business processes agile
and transparent. The isolation of the Business Rules from the application’s
code using Business Rules Engine is the key to greater flexibility and better
adaptability for future changes in the Business Process Management Systems
(BPMS). This article has discussed Business Process Rules and its applicability
in designing flexible, agile systems.
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