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The purpose of business analysis is to accurately describe the requirements for an information system (more or less). Business Analysts use a variety of techniques to do this. They use techniques designed to help them find out what is required, to elicit the requirements, and they use techniques to describe and model those requirements in a way that is clear and implementable. In working with Business Analysts on a wide range of decision management projects, I’ve drawn up my observations on why BA’s like decision management:
Decision Management helps effectively use business rules.
For business analysts driving requirements for organizations adopting business rules, decision management provides a critical framework for success. Focusing only on the business rules themselves often results in a “big bucket o’rules” that are poorly coordinated and hard to manage. Decision management provides the needed principle to impose some business oriented structure on this complexity. Also, the separation of a declarative definition of these rules from the sequence-oriented business process improves both rules and processes.
Decision Management helps simplify processes and workflow.
Most systems involve some workflow and this is increasingly described by business analysts in terms of business process models. Experience shows that when these process models do not explicitly call out decisions, the process becomes over complex. Decision making modeled as business process is messy and hard to maintain. The local exceptions that can overwhelm process models are often all about decision-making. With decisions identified and modeled separately from the process these local exceptions don’t clutter up the process. Identifying and modeling decisions using decision management makes business processes simpler, smarter and more agile. The new Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard is an evolution of Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) 2.0 into an even more powerful and capable tool set. For more, read my new book with co-author and BPMN expert Tom Debevoise, The MicroGuide to Process and Decision Modeling in BPMN/DMN: Building More Effective Processes by Integrating Process Modeling with Decision Modeling and now available on Amazon.
Decision Management clarifies analytic needs.
The primary purpose of analytics, whether business intelligence, data mining or predictive analytics, is to improve decision making. With decision management, business analysts can identify and describe the decisions for which analytics will be required. How the data requirements support these decisions, and where these decisions fit, will be clarified and the use of analytics focused more precisely.
Business Analysts have a pivotal role in the success of any systems project. They recognize the importance of tools and techniques to better describe the business requirements. Business Analysts want to use business rules most effectively, simplify complex business processes and focus analytics efforts. That’s why Business Analysts I’ve had the pleasure to work with like decision management.
This post first appeared on www.jtonedm.com
