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What's Really Needed to Align Business and IT
Part 1:  Creating True Business Solutions

by Ronald G. Ross

Excerpted with permission from Building Business Solutions:  Business Analysis with Business Rules, by Ronald G. Ross with Gladys S.W. Lam, An IIBA® Sponsored Handbook, Business Rule Solutions, LLC, October 2011, 304 pp.  URL:http://www.brsolutions.com/bbs

Before relating the following cautionary tale about scrap and rework in system development, let me tell you how the story came out.  What approach did the organization normally use for figuring out business solutions before jumping into designing a system?  None.  What group or role in the organization was responsible for making sure it happened?  Nobody.  Sound vaguely familiar?

An All-Too-Common Story:  Case Study

The organization is in auto insurance.  Their existing business process went like this:  When an insured gets into an accident, the insured calls the claim center by telephone, reports the damage, then takes the vehicle to a claim center.  The claim center gives an estimate for repairs and provides a claim form.  The claimant takes the claim form to a repair shop to have the car repaired.

The company had conducted an in-depth study of claims.  The study indicated that over 80% of claimants were honest and, surprisingly, most repair shops too.  A large majority of claims were fender-benders and glass breakage with no bodily injury (i.e., 'simple').

So someone came up with a bright idea.  For simple claims from honest claimants, the claimant could just phone-in the claim, then take the car directly to a selected list of (honest) repair shops.  Claimants would like that – one less step (no need to bring the car to a claim center for an estimate).  The claim centers would like it too – less volume.

An IT project was initiated to implement the idea.  A competent analyst was assigned.  First she interviewed telephone operators at the claims centers to find out what they needed.  Easy.  Claimants usually go to a repair shop close to home or to work.  So a key feature for the new system would be for an operator to key-in a claimant's home or work address and access all certified repair shops nearby.

The analyst then interviewed managers of the repair shops.  Easy too.  They simply needed access to claimants' policies to determine coverage.

Six months later an impressive new system had been built, complete with a colorful map of the city.  Point to any location (or key-in any address) and the system identified all certified repair shops within an x-mile radius.  Slick.  Lots of bells and whistles.

The IT project team proudly demoed the new system to a group of high-level managers.  Fifteen minutes into the demo, a senior director asks:  "Are there any legal implications for our organization if we suggest repair shops over the phone?"  Blank stares.  The IT analyst didn't know the answer, nor did any other team member.

That afternoon the senior director phoned us[1] and said, "I don't know what went wrong.  A system has been built, but I have no idea whether we should roll it out.  We have no sense of what business issues it might create.  Can you help?"  Gladys responded, "If you can get the right people in the room, I can facilitate a session to find out."  He asked, "Who do you need?"  Gladys replied, "Someone with significant experience from legal, the director of the telephone claim centers, a manager representing the repair shops, and a seasoned adjudicator who understands the needs of claimants thoroughly."

When a senior director wants something done, things happen.  Monday morning Gladys was in a room with six managers including the four people she had requested.  Here's some of what she discovered within just a few hours.

From the director of the telephone claim centers:  "Did you know that an average one-minute increase in talk time on every call means adding six additional operators to the staff?  Our call volume is so high our operators have no spare time for additional conversation.  Suppose an operator suggests ABC repair shop and the claimant responds, 'My sister went there once and they did a terrible job.  What other ones do you have?'  The operator must spend time going through alternatives."

From the representative from legal:  "We absolutely cannot suggest a repair shop over the phone.  We could have legal issues from both claimants and repair shops.  Claimants might hold us liable if they feel the repair shop doesn't treat them well or fails to repair the damage properly.  Repair shops will have issues if they feel we suggest competitors more often."

Gladys spent several days brainstorming a viable business solution with the group.  In the end the group decided on a public, self-help internet system rather than the internal system originally developed.

She led the group through a thorough assessment of business risks.  The new business solution would require beefed-up security and extra information about repair shops.  Since some claimants might not have access to the web or feel comfortable using it, an automated phone service would allow them to search for near-by repair shops by punching phone buttons.  People who dislike automated phone dialogs could still call a claim center, but the response would be limited to a request for a list of all repair shops sent automatically by the mailroom.

The bottom line:  The best business solution turned out to be very different from the system built originally.  That system basically had to be scrapped.

Lessons Learned

This case study and innumerable ones like it demonstrate that:

  1. Business Analysts should think and talk in terms of creating business solutions, not building software systems.

  2. Blind alleys and showstoppers can be found early on.

  3. Creating viable business solutions involves identifying business risks and ways to address those risks — in other words, business strategy.

  4. Most IT approaches are fundamentally deficient in that regard.  It's simply not what they're about.

  5. If you have the right people in the room, and conduct the conversation in the right way, it doesn't take that long to work out a viable strategy for the business solution.
What's the worst case?  You might find out there's no viable strategy for the business solution at the present time.  (We've never seen that happen.)  Still, wouldn't it be better to know?!  As they say, hope is not a strategy.  And given the costs of IT, hope can also prove very expensive.

In Part Two of this two-part series, Ron talks about a better approach for creating business solutions based on strategy in the form of a Policy Charter.

References

[1]  Gladys S.W. Lam, Co-Founder and Principal of Business Rule Solutions, LLC, and I. return to article



standard citation for this article:
Ronald G. Ross, "What's Really Needed to Align Business and IT — Part 1:  Creating True Business Solutions," Business Rules Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Feb. 2012), URL:  http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2012/b636.html  

 about . . .

 RONALD G. ROSS


Ronald G. Ross is recognized internationally as the "father of business rules." He has Chaired the annual Business Rules Forum since 1997. He was a charter member of the Business Rules Group in the 1980s, and an editor of two landmark BRG papers, The Business Motivation Model and the Business Rules Manifesto. He is active in standards development, with core involvement in SBVR.

Mr. Ross is Executive Editor of BRCommunity.com and its flagship publication, Business Rules Journal. He is author of eight professional books, including Business Rule Concepts (2009), a just released 3rd edition of his popular, easy-to-read 1998 handbook. Mr. Ross speaks frequently at industry events worldwide.

Mr. Ross is Co-Founder and Principal of Business Rule Solutions, LLC and is actively engaged in consulting, training and research. He co-developed RuleSpeak®. Mr. Ross gives highly regarded public seminars in North America through AttainingEdge and in Europe through IRM-UK.

For additional information about Mr. Ross, please visit his personal website at www.RonRoss.info.




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February 2012
What's Really Needed to Align Business and IT Part 1: Creating True Business Solutions
By: Ronald G. Ross


January 2012
Concept Model vs. Fact Model vs. Conceptual Data Model; Just a Matter of Semantics?
By: Ronald G. Ross


December 2011
Business Rules: Basic Principles
By: Ronald G. Ross with Gladys S.W. Lam


November 2011
Know-How Models: How Business Rules, Decisions, and Events Relate in True-to-Life Business Models

October 2011
Business Analysis with Business Rules
By: Ronald G. Ross with Gladys S.W. Lam


September 2011
How Business Processes and Business Rules Relate

August 2011
Decision Analysis (Part 3): Defining Scope

July 2011
Decision Analysis (Part 2): The Basic Elements of Operational Business Decisions

June 2011
Decision Analysis (Part 1): What Kind of Decisions?

May 2011
How Long Will Your Fact Model Last? — The Power of Structured Business Vocabularies

April 2011
More on the If-Then Format for Expressing Business Rules: Questions and Answers

March 2011
Operational Business Decisions
Whose Decisions Are They Anyway?


February 2011
The Anatomy of Decisions
The Business-Rule View


January 2011
Why Rulebook Management? Because Software Requirements and Business Rules Simply Aren't the Same!

December 2010
Introducing Question Charts (Q-Charts™) for Analyzing Operational Business Decisions: A New Technique for Getting at Business Rules

November 2010
Agility Based on Business Rules It's Just Common Sense

October 2010
Five Tests for What Is a Business Rule?

September 2010
Can a Business Rule Be Enforced Differently in Different Contexts?

August 2010
How Far Can You Take Decisioning?

July 2010
Business Rules vs. System Design Choices

June 2010
Four Useful Constructs for Developing a Structured Business Vocabulary: Special-Purpose Elements of Structure for Fact Models

May 2010
Eight Things You Need to Know About Fact Types Bringing Verbs into Structured Business Vocabulary

April 2010
Business Vocabulary: The Most Basic Requirement of All

March 2010
What Is a Business Rule?

February 2010
CRUD in Business Rules: Accident-Prone Decision Logic

January 2010
The Point of Knowledge

December 2009
When is an Exception Really an Exception? The Business Rule Principles of Accommodation and Wholeness

November 2009
Verb-ish Models for Verbalization: Give Us Back Our Verbs!

October 2009
From Rulebook Management to Business Governance: Where Business Rules Fit

September 2009
What You Need to Know About Rulebook Management

August 2009
When Is a Door Not a Door? ~ Basic Ideas of the Business Rules Paradigm

July 2009
General Rulebook Systems (GRBS): What's the General Idea?

June 2009
Becoming Strategy-Driven: The Policy Charter

May 2009
Product Quality and a Longer-Term View: A 'Simple' Matter of Business Policies

April 2009
RuleSpeak® Sentence Forms: Specifying Natural-Language Business Rules in English

March 2009
The Rulebook: To Play Ball You Need Rules

February 2009
Extreme Business Agility (Part 6): A Manifesto-in-Progress on the Semantic Re-Engineering of Products

January 2009
Extreme Business Agility (Part 5): The Optimal Edge of Business Performance

December 2008
Extreme Business Agility (Part 4): Change Deployment Hell

November 2008
Extreme Business Agility ~ Part 3: Examples of Non-Agile vs. Agile Business Capabilities

October 2008
Extreme Business Agility ~ Part 2: A Semantic Approach to Re-Engineering Your Company's Products

September 2008
Extreme Business Agility — Part 1: A Value Chain for Re-Engineering Your Company’s Products

August 2008
My Son, Business Rule Analyst — Governance and Compliance Through Young Eyes

July 2008
Rules vs. Processes (Again) — Part 2: Now for Events

June 2008
Rules vs. Processes (Again) — Part 1: There’s Simply No Need for Confusion

May 2008
Legacy Modernization, Semantics, and the Knowledge Economy ~ Have You Connected the Dots Yet?!

April 2008
The Emergence of SBVR and the True Meaning of ‘Semantics’: Why You Should Care (a Lot!) ~ Part 2

March 2008
The Emergence of SBVR and the True Meaning of ‘Semantics’: Why You Should Care (a Lot!) ~ Part 1

February 2008
The Phoenix Strategy ~ A Lower-Risk Approach to Rejuvenating Systems and Legacy Modernization

January 2008
'Rules of Record' Why 'System of Record' Isn't Enough

December 2007
The Decision Center: A Center of Excellence for Coordinating Business Rules and Other Process 'Smarts'

November 2007
The Latency of Decisions ~ New Ideas on the ROI of Business Rules

October 2007
Legacy Systems -- Poorly Engineered or Over-Engineered? New Insights about Business Rules and Enterprise Decisioning

September 2007
The Value of Decisions ~ New Ideas on the ROI of Business Rules

August 2007
A Case of Dueling Manifestos? Business Rules and Enterprise Decision Management

July 2007
What's Wrong with If-Then Syntax For Expressing Business Rules ~ One Size Doesn't Fit All

June 2007
Are IT Terms Fundamental to Every Business? Not!

May 2007
Are all Rules Business Rules? Not!

April 2007
Are Software Requirements Rules? Not!

March 2007
Are Integrity Constraints Business Rules? Not!

February 2007
From Rule Management to Business Governance, Part 4: Governance Engineers and the Chief Governance Officer (CGO)

January 2007
From Rule Management to Business Governance, Part 3: Re-Engineering the Governance Process

December 2006
From Rule Management to Business Governance, Part 2: Governance and How it Relates to Business Rules

November 2006
From Rule Management to Business Governance, Part 1: Governance and How it Relates to Business Rules

October 2006
Rules and Processes: Examples Showing How They Relate

September 2006
The Meaning of Things: Definitions, Intensions, Rules, and Extensions

August 2006
Re-Vitalize, Don't Just Re-platform! ~ Three Tests for Whether Your Company 'Gets It' with Respect to Re-Platforming Business IP

July 2006
The Dirty Secrets About Your Company's Business IP That Nobody Wants to Talk About

June 2006
A Personal Insurance Saga ~ The Economics of Business Rules

May 2006
Concepts, Definitions, and Rules: RuleSpeak® Practices

April 2006
The RuleSpeak® Business Rule Notation

March 2006
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 6. Point-of-Knowledge Architecture (POKA)

February 2006
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 5. Scripts -- Rule-Friendly Process Models

January 2006
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 4. Business Processes vs. System Processes

December 2005
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 3. Three Best Practices for Designing Business Processes with Rules

November 2005
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 2. Business Processes

October 2005
How Rules and Processes Relate ~ Part 1. The Challenges

September 2005
Rule Quality ~ The Route to Trustworthy Business Logic

August 2005
Decision Tables, Part 2 ~ The Route to Completeness

July 2005
Decision Tables, Part 1 ~ The Route to Consolidated Business Logic

June 2005
Rule Reduction ~ The Route to Atomic Business Rules

May 2005
Essence Definitions and Business Rules ~ Developing Stable Anchor Points for Operational Knowledge

April 2005
Can You Violate Structural Rules? (part 3) ~ The Difference Between Breaking Rules and 'Breaking' Knowledge

March 2005
Can You Violate Structural Rules? (Part 2) ~ The Difference Between How to Compute and How to Behave

February 2005
Can You Violate Structural Rules? (Part 1) ~ The Difference Between Violations and Bad Decisions

 

Janauary 2005
Business Rules and Knowledge Workers ~ Getting to the 'Point of Knowledge'

 

December 2004
Can a Definition be Violated? ~ Definitions and Business Rules

 

November 2004
Rustling Up Good Definitions ~ There's a Lot Less and a Lot More to It

 

October 2004 

Clarifying Clarifications ~ Universal 'And' to the Rescue

 

September 2004 

Relearning the Basics of Communicating ~ Business Semantics and Business Rules

 

August 2004 

The Light World vs. the Dark World ~ Business Rules for Authorization

 

July 2004 

Best-Fit Decision Points ~ How They Fit into the Business Rule Approach

 

June 2004 

What Rule Independence Means to System Models ~ Less and More than You Think!

 

May 2004 

The Semantics Lexicon ~ Terms For The Business Rules / Smart Process

 

April 2004 

Don't Reinvent Rule Engines!

 

March 2004 

Rules And Compliance Tactics

 

February 2004 

Tracing the Path of Rule Reduction

 

December 2003

Do Rules Decompose To Processes Or Vice Versa?

 

November 2003

Should You Encapsulate Knowledge in Modeling Real-World Things?

 

October 2003

Business Rules, Encapsulation, and Models of the Real World

 

September 2003

Business vs. Environment in Business Models

 

August 2003

Requirement Statement vs. Rule Statement

 

July 2003

Rules as Constraints:  On or By the System Design?

 

June 2003

Rules Reveal Events -- Not Actions

 

May 2003

Actions Are Not Rules (and Vice Versa)

 

April 2003

The Definitions of 'Business Rule' and 'Rule'

 

March 2003

Business Problems Addressed by the Business Rule Approach

 

January 2003

About the Business Rules Manifesto ~ The Business Rule Message in a Nutshell

 

November 2002

Business Rules for the Company's Provisioning Processes ~ There’s a Lot More to Reference Data than Just Data!

 

September 2002

The Terminator -- I'll be Back (with Just the Right Term)

 

July 2002

What Does it Mean to be Business-Driven? (Part 2)

 

May 2002

What Does it Mean to be Business-Driven? (Part 1)

 

March 2002

A Telltale E-mail Trail:  The Case for In-Line Business Rule Analysis

 

January 2002

Managing M x N Vs. M + N, Market-Driven Economies, and Other eCommerce Issues (part 2)

 

November 2001

Managing M x N Vs. M + N, Market-Driven Economies, and Other eCommerce Issues (part 1)

 

September 2001

The BRS Rule Classification Scheme

 

July 2001

Minding Your P's and Q's

 

May 2001

RuleSpeak"! -- Templates And Guidelines For Business Rules

 

March 2001

Business Rules In Business Processes ~ Title Rules For Process And Rules For Product/Service

 

January 2001

What Is Rule Management About?

 

November 2000

Let's Make a Deal: A Killer App for Business Rules

 

September 2000

The Re's Of Business Rules

 

July 2000

What Are Fact Models And Why Do You Need Them? (Part 2)

 

May 2000

What Are Fact Models And Why Do You Need Them? (Part 1)

 

March 2000

What is a 'Business Rule'?

 

January 2000

Current Thoughts On Expressing Business Rules

 

November 1999

The Fin de Siegle Legacy Mindset
 

September 1999

Analysis Paralysis Just May Save Your Life
 

July 1999

If We Had Started Coding Already...
 

May 1999

Your Core Business Processes Need a Rule Engine
 

March 1999

Who or What is a True Business Analyst?
 

January 1999

Four Things Wrong with the Way We Develop Information Systems



November/December 1998
Push-Type Data Hub vs. Pull-Type Data Warehouse
By Ronald G. Ross

September/October 1998
What Knowledge Management is About (And What it Has To Do With Business Rules)
By Ronald G. Ross

May/June 1998
The Next Great Leap Forward ~ About the Changes You See
By Ronald G. Ross

March/April 1998
Business Rules as Customer Interface
By Ronald G. Ross

January/February 1998
Components and Business Rules: Do They Connect?
By Ronald G. Ross

November/December 1997
The Policy Charter: A Small-Sized Picture of the Big Picture
By Ronald G. Ross

September/October 1997

Implementing Application Packages: Is There A Better Way?

By Ronald G. Ross


July/August 1997

'Why' is Why Business Rule Methodology is Different

By Ronald G. Ross


May/June 1997

Never-ending On-the-Job Training

By Ronald G. Ross


September/October 1996

Re-Usability in the Business Rule Approach

By Ronald G. Ross


March/April 1996

The Newest Idea In Business Rules: Rules Normalize!

By Ronald G. Ross


January/February 1996

An Open Letter to DBMS Vendors: We Need Active Database Systems

By Ronald G. Ross


May/June 1995

The Greatest Irony Of The Information Age: Business Rules

By Ronald G. Ross


November/December 1995

Business Rules: Knowledge For Knowledge Workers

By Ronald G. Ross


March/April 1994

"Play Ball!"

By Ronald G. Ross


November/December 1988

The History Of Steam-Powered Ships

By Ronald G. Ross


January/February 1994

"Business Rules, At What Cost?"

By Ronald G. Ross


May/June 1994

Business Rules:  Birth of a Movement

By Ronald G. Ross


July/August 1991

Why I Like the Zachman Framework Architecture"

By Ronald G. Ross


March/April 1997

Business Process Re-Engineering

By Ronald G. Ross

 

 

 

 





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