optimizing business rules through business and it collaboration final

© 2014 IBM Corporation

Optimizing Business Rules Through Business and IT Collaboration

18 June 2014 – USAA Rules Forum – San Antonio

Scott Simmons – [email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]


First … Congratulations …


Second … Would you buy a used car from this guy?

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I am a USAA member ;-)


Our Roadmap for the next 45 minutes ….

I don’t believe in luck …

I believe in preparation

Bobby Knight

Indiana Basketball Coach

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Business rules and events adoption is evolutionary

Business/IT Collaboration leads to success with rule/event implementation

3 Establishing enterprise competency for rules/events is key


Agenda

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First Things First?

Dancing The Dance

Building the “Perfect Beast”


First Things First?

Dancing The Dance


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Traditional Approach for Managing Decisions

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Wikipedia –

“Business rules describe the operations,

definitions and constraints that apply to an

organization. Business rules can apply to

people, processes, corporate behavior and

computing systems in an organization, and

are put in place to help the organization

achieve its goals”

Traditional Decision Management

Applications

Processes People

Documents

But it is more than “rules” – it also includes:

Events … enabling sense and respond

Analytics … linking trends and changes

And, most importantly, the intersection

of these “decision services”


A Better Way to Implement Decisions

Optimize decision automation with a focus on member experience and customer management

Reduce the maintenance time/cost and optimize Time-to-Market for new rules/events

Minimize/eliminate rule/event silos through establishing enterprise competency for decisions

Make decision logic accessible to both Business and IT through collaboration and alignment

Exploit integration with analytics to support “learned behavior” over time

Provide an audit trail of decisions rendered across different applications and optimize over time

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Decision Automation Provides For Rapid Time-To-Market

Applications

(Member Experience, CRM, Offer Management)

Rules/Events

Release 1.0 Release 2.0

Release 1.1 Release 1.2 Release 1.3 Release 2.1

Change in production

Release 2.0

Business Application Updates

(Months, Years)

Business Decisions Updates

(Days, Weeks) : Application up to date


Lack of transparency – rules are “hidden” lending to testing and auditing challenges

Lack of governance, versioning and sharing (projects, departments, organizations)

Outcomes are not the expected or required ones

Duplicate and inconsistent business rule implementations with limited or no re-use

Lack of clear rule/event ownership

Inconsistent business vocabulary and terminology

Evolving best practices for rule design/development, rule governance/management

Challenges Incumbent with Implementing Decisions/Rules


Who’s On First?

Dancing The Dance


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Key Focus Areas for Rule/Event Implementation

Focus on key drivers e.g. member experience, offer

management, regulations across key lines of business

Establish enterprise competency around rules/events

Focus on business/IT collaboration on rule/event discovery

Document/implement a prudent governance framework

Establish best practices for integration and deployment

Rules

Events

Anticipate

Detect

Respond

Analytics


The Role of Business Team in Rule/Event Development

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Model

Author

Validate

Test

Deploy

Execute

Monitor

Analyze

Developer

Rule/Event Manager

Rule Administrator

System Administrator

Enterprise

Rule/Event

Repository

Software

Development

Lifecycle

Application

Lifecycle

Business

Analyst


Nationwide’s Approach to Automating Decisions

From IBM IMPACT 2014 – April 2014


Fidelity Approach for Business/IT Collaboration

Fidelity Business Teams focus on the definition of rules

and works with IT on the semantics in the shared vocabulary

(From IBM IMPACT 2014 – April 2014)

This is where collaboration happens ….


An Example – Rules Implementation at a US Tier One Bank

Focused rules team with retail and small business LOB

– Types of Rules: Offers, Marketing, Refund Management, Account Origination

– Supports multiple channels e.g. ATM, Internet, Call Center, Telephony, Teller

– Key business value is Time-to-Market – the ability to release new decisions rapidly

– High-volume, high-impact performance demands: average >45 MM transactions per day

Collaborative rule management provides

– Release of multiple rule publishes per week

– Business demand for rules/events is accelerating

– Changes to rules managed by rules team

– Numerous projects ongoing for Personalization, Risk, Compliance, Payments

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Who’s On First?

Dancing The Dance


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Making Business Rules/Events an Enterprise Competency


Implementing a Business Rules Center of Excellence

Definition: Whatever you call them, a Center of Excellence (CoE) should, at a most basic level consist of: A team of people that promote collaboration and using best practices around a specific focus area to drive business results. This team could be staffed with full- or part-time members.

http://agileelements.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/what-is-a-center-of-excellence/ Jon Strickler

http://agileelements.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/what-is-a-center-of-excellence/












Governance Prioritize initiatives & implement governance processes

Develop Skills Identify skill gaps & create development roadmaps

Optimization Analyze trends and alert rule owners to situations that need attention

Promote Adoption Manage standards to reduce project risk and accelerate delivery

Thought Leadership Set direction and vision for decision management

Best Practices Capture, communicate and enforce best practices and methods

Center of

Excellence

The Establishment of a Rules/Events Center of Excellence


Support Demand Generation via adoption and evangelism

Support for large Business Transformation initiatives/programs

Support Demand Fulfillment – ensuring projects get prioritized and

completed on time and within budget

Provide a shared infrastructure for use by the business

Support an approach which fosters re-use and governance

Acts as a provider/resource pool for specialized skills

Rules/Events CoE Goals Vary By Organization


Core Rule/Event CoE Components

Charter/Mission

Organization and Executive Sponsorship

Relationships with organizations

Governance

Re-use of existing practices and models

Cross-domain focus e.g. CRM, Regulatory

Prioritization of projects

Taking business strategy into account

Includes understanding of technical risks

Communication

Additional Considerations

Evangelism

Methodology and Standards

Reuse of assets such as style guides

Measurement – metrics, timers, KPIs

Consultancy

Accelerate projects and adoption

Consistency across domains

Currency

Keeping up with latest trends, product

announcements, etc.

Focus Areas for Rules/Events Centers of Excellence


Project Identification and Design Approach

A key focus of CoE should be in the project selection/ and initial design/implementation

Organizations need established approaches for project identification and prioritization

Discovery provides a foundation to drive requirements and increase success of initiatives


Agile Rule/Event Methodology: Key Principles

Allow end users to define functionality and high-level design (Rule/Event Discovery)

Each release implements critical rules/events the business uses on a day to day basis

Management of requirements/"feature creep" can optimize project success

Early iterations expose risk early versus big-bang development approaches

Easier to identify common parts as you design or implement them in iterations

Defects and bottlenecks are found and corrected over several iterations.

Team members learn along the way – both in terms of business and technical aspects.

Key is to balance iterative and agile design/development

with traditional LOB-IT expectations and resource needs


Summary

Adoption of rules/events takes time –

every journey begins with a single step

Collaborative rule/event implementation

leads to success across projects

Development of enterprise competency

in rule/event solutions provides a

focused approach to solution delivery

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Play as a team – Win as a team


Questions?

optimizing business rules through business and it collaboration final

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