Hi,
A quick introduction of myself, I'm a Technical Director at ILOG Inc,
Sunnyvale, CA, and some years ago I created the Professional Service
delivery methodology (Called ISIS) that is used today within the
company. One of a major piece of ISIS is a methodology to develop
application using business rule. Recently I was in contact with Ricardo
as I would like to contribute to EPF 
by providing an agile Business Rule Development methodology as an EPF
plugin. So he told me to write to this email list.
 
ILOG is using EPF since one year and half for managing the content of
ISIS. Today ILOG has accepted my proposition to provide the Agile
Business Rule Development plugin to Eclipse foundation, and is in
agreement with Eclipse license agreement.

I can share with you the current published version of this plugin if
needed. It is based on epf1.2 and reuse- extend elements of OpenUP. 
I would like to know what are the steps to deploy this plugin within epf
dev environment, as XP or Scrum did already. Most of the content is
already here and we can commit in your CVS before the end of September,
so that people can download it.
 
If you have questions, comments, or needs for more information please
feel free to contact me.
 
Here is some details of the content:
 
The Agile Business Rule Development plugin presents a pragmatic approach
for the development of a Business Rule Application 
using Rule Engine technology like ILOG JRules, Rule for .Net or other
any other Rule Engine on the market.
 
A rule set is a piece of software which is executed by a rule engine.
Integrated in a business application it implements a 
sub set of the business logic. This logic is externalized from the
traditional code and can change in the future, and be 
maintained by business analysts.
 
As any software component, a rule set follows the same standard
development patterns and methodology as other components.
But by externalizing part of the business logic, the business owners are
creating flexible business policies which represent
competitive advantage and are considered as real asset of the company.
As important element of the business decision, 
the business rules need strong management processes and tools to support
their life cycle. An enterprise Business Rule Management
 System (BRMS) provides solutions to make this management more
efficient, both for developers and for the business users of 
the applications.
 
The Agile Business Rule Development methodology is applying the Agile
Alliance manifesto as developing a rule set enforces strongly the Agile
values:
* Individuals and interactions over processes and tools - the rule
discovery, analysis and validation force to have a strong communication
between developer and Subject Matter Expert. Processes are defined as
light as possible. 
* Working software over comprehensive documentation. The proposed rule
set development done per iteration, with its validation step shows to
the business user and other stakeholders that a working rule set has
much business value than a rule description manual. 
* Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. The Subject Matter
Expert who is defining the business policies and the business rules is
strongly involved in the development process. He is the customer,
collocated with the development team. 
* Responding to change over following a plan. Business Rules are
changing, quicker than standard software, this is one of the big values
of a BRMS, so the methodology to support the rule set development has to
define the activities, processes and work products to support those
changes.
The Agile Business Rule Development plug in addresses in more detail the
following goals:
* To separate rules as a manageable artifact using discovery, analysis
and authoring activities and work products 
* To trace rules during their full life cycle from requirement to
deployment 
* To link rules to business context and motivation 
* To develop the rule description using business term and high level
rule language 
* To prepare the logical data model for the rule engine (The concept of
Business Object Model in ILOG JRules)  
* To prepare the Rule set implementation and deployment as decision
services 
* To articulate the rule governance processes
 
There are two strong concepts that will apply to rule set development:
* The unforgiving honesty of working rules 
* The effectiveness of people working together with goodwill (the
business user and the development team).
The Agile Business Rule Development methodology details all the
different activities to develop a rule set, from rule discovery to rule
set deployment and maintenance. We can group the set of activities into
five groups. Those groups will be used to build an iterative approach to
the development: 

*                     Rule Discovery
<outbind://14/myProjects/ISISws/isis_library_62/agile_rule_62/discipline
s/rule_discovery_FA7BDF5F.html>  

*                     Rule Analysis
<outbind://14/myProjects/ISISws/isis_library_62/agile_rule_62/discipline
s/rule_analysis_443FDB7.html>  

*                     Rule Authoring
<outbind://14/myProjects/ISISws/isis_library_62/agile_rule_62/discipline
s/rule_authoring_954E2047.html>  

*                     Rule Validation
<outbind://14/myProjects/ISISws/isis_library_62/agile_rule_62/discipline
s/rule_validation_EE8F93A2.html>  

*                     Rule Deployment
<outbind://14/myProjects/ISISws/isis_library_62/agile_rule_62/discipline
s/rule_deployment_97D5B5DE.html>  
<outbind://14/myProjects/ISISws/isis_library_62/agile_rule_62/discipline
s/rule_validation_EE8F93A2.html>  

The following diagram is presenting how the five group of activities can
be executed in a process flow using back loops to support short
iterations. The rule set will cook following those cycles.

 

 

Figure 1 Rule Set Development Life Cycle

 
 
 
Jerome Boyer   
Semiconductor Business Division -  Services Senior Director - 
1195 West Fremont Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA  94087-3832 USA
"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future"
Neils Bohr

Mobile 650 642 6852 - Office  408 991 7195

 

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