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.Guideline 7.3.10Be prepared to capture meta data about rules.Each organization will determine the kinds of meta data to capture about rules,depending on how the organization positions those rules.That is, are the rules fordocumentation purposes, for change management, or for initiating change? Refer toChapter 15 for an overview of rule meta data that has proven to be useful.Case Study: Step 7.3 Select or Confirm Rule StandardsCase Study Instructions:Determine which classifications of rules to capture.Confirm where you will store the rules during discovery and then duringanalysis.Decide on a rule-naming convention.Determine which rules will be documented in the data model meta dataand which will be documented as stand-alone rules.173 Confirm rule templates for expressing those rules you will document asstand-alone rules when you will document both a natural languageversion and a templated version.Case Study Solution:As for rule classifications, you decide to capture all classifications: constraints,guidelines, inferences, computations, and action enablers.You will capture them in a word processor during the rule discovery workshop andtransfer them to a homegrown rules repository for the analysis phase.You will follow the rule-naming convention presented in Chapter 2.The logical data model meta data will house relationship cardinality, optionality, andreferential integrity rules, as well as attribute null and uniqueness rules.The rulesrepository will house relationship optionality rules, attribute domain value rules, and allother rules.You will use the templates mentioned in Chapter 2.Step 7.4: Plan Rule Discovery Time and CommitmentYou are now ready to plan your rule sessions, be they sessions with business people,with policy documents, or with computer code.Guideline 7.4.1Craft an efficient schedule by which to carry out the interfaces with the rule sources.When rule sources are people, you need to schedule access to them.Hopefully, theseare important and busy people so you need to plan your time with them early and youneed to have your rule discovery roadmap well defined so as not to waste their time.Guideline 7.4.2Insure that the plan is optimal for the organization s culture, especially for those partswhere business experts are to provide insight into and confirm resulting rules.A suggestion here is to conduct facilitated sessions for rule discovery and subsequentrule confirmation.Another suggestion is to establish a rule stewardship programthrough which there is a natural hierarchy of rule issue resolution.This allows you toescalate disagreements on rules and resolve them quickly and appropriately.Case Study: Step 7.4 Plan Rule Discovery Time and CommitmentRefer to Chapter 8 for planning the workshop.Step 7.5: Discover the Rules through the RoadmapThis is simply the step by which you step through the discovery process, using the rulesources for finding rules.Let s walk through sample steps in the use-case roadmap:1.Review with a business person the target use-case description.2.For each step, determine if the system makes decisions to carry out thestep.You may also decide whether, if the human makes decisions tocarry out the step, you want to record decisions that are not automated.Sometimes, these decisions are out of scope, as you will see in the casestudy below.3.For each step in which the system makes a decision, ask the businessperson to identify those circumstances for the business event, activity,or system response that are not acceptable.These will be constraints,174 those rules that prevent the business event from completingsuccessfully.For example, perhaps the order-total dollar amount cannotexceed the customer s credit limit amount.Perhaps the customer musthave a certain credit rating to pay by credit.Capture these as decisions,which means express them, as Is primary business noun in state x? Refer to Chapter 6 for more details.4.For each step in which the system makes a decision, ask the businessperson about the kinds of warnings the system should give, even if itdoes not reject the business event.Perhaps the order-total dollaramount is permitted to exceed the customer s credit limit for a preferredcustomer, although it should not be permitted without human input tothat decision (human override to the warning).These are guidelinerules.Capture these also as decisions, if useful.5.For each step in which the system makes a decision, ask the businessperson to identify those circumstances that might occur and which donot reject the business event (constraints) or give warning (guidelines),but which alter the way the business event occurs.These questions leadto inferred knowledge rules.For example, if the customer pays for theorder before shipment, does the order qualify for a 20 percent discount?You may want to abstract these up to decisions also, identifying aprimary business noun and a corresponding state for it.6.Ask the business person to identify those terms in the above rules thatare calculated values.This leads you to computation rules.7.Finally, ask the business person for those circumstances within abusiness event that should initiate another business event (hence,business process).You may need to ask the business person for theseby asking for other circumstances that might occur that don t alter theoriginal business event, but which require action by another.Forexample, if a product inventory amount dips below a reorder target, theinventory reorder process should order more inventory.8.Start a list of issues, as they arise.Guideline 7.5.1Don t be concerned about not catching all of the rules.Remember that rule discovery never ends.Moreover, in rule analysis, you will checkcompleteness of rules through the use of rule patterns and through data modelinspection.Guideline 7.5.2Don t be concerned if you find policies rather than rules.Up to this point, the chapter assumes that you can capture rules from your audience.However, if your audience is comprised of high-level managers, you may not be able tocapture rules at all, but may find policies instead.This is common and nothing to worryabout.After all, discovery really aims to find knowledge and knowledge is not alwaysclear, succinct, and detailed at the start.You may, in fact, discover a combination ofpolicies and rules from your audience.Your goal is to capture intellectual decision-making or computing capability in a mannerthat is as unambiguous as possible.If you capture only a policy, because the audiencedoes not know the detailed rules, document the policy and seek corresponding rulesfrom other people later.If you capture rules that are not atomic (they can be broken intosmaller rules), don t worry about that now.It is more important to capture them in a form175 that the audience is comfortable with.You can always translate them into another formlater.An example is that a business person, for the case study, may state that the employeediscount must be applied after volume discount and after additional member discount
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