Requirements Toolbox Tool

Business Rules
Introduction A statement that defines or constrains some aspect of the business. Business rules must be one of the following: Term A word or phase that has a specific meaning for the business in some designated context. Fact Expresses relationships between two or more terms. Constraint Constraints on what actions can or cannot be taken and is closely related to what data may and may not be updated. Derivation A fact created by an inference or mathematical calculation from terms, facts, constraints, or other derivations. Atomic business rules cannot be reduced any further without losing important information about the business. Key details of how to use the technique Rules often begin as general statements of policy. Attributes of business rules include the owner, the source, the source category (e.g. human or document), jurisdiction, relative stability, and relative complexity. Business rules are represented on a number of other models, such as state diagrams (in the form of guard conditions), data models (connected with attributes and relationships), and use cases (each of which generally requires several business rules). Situations in which the technique best applies Strengths When answering questions such as: What are the policies that we must enforce? Why do we need this policy? Business rules are really at the heart of your functional requirements They represent the reasoning you do, and the decisions you make, when youre deciding on these requirements. Barbara von Halle, Business Rules Applied, Wiley, 2002 Ellen Gottesdiener, Requirements by Collaboration, Addison Wesley, 2002. Planning and conducting workshops. In addition, Chapter 2 provides a good overview of Wiegers requirements process and a great discussion on which models are appropriate for different situations. Scott Ambler, Agile Modeling: Effective Practices for eXtreme Programming and the Unified Process, John Wiley & Sons, 2002 Also: The Official Agile Modeling Site. http://www.agilemodeling.com/ An impressive set of links on modeling. Includes links to summary descriptions of a wide variety of modeling artifacts and essays on creating light-weight models and agile documentation. Craig Larman, Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-oriented Analysis and Design and the Unified Process, 2nd Edition, Prentice-Hall, 2001. Using models for analysis and design. Alistair Cockburn, Writing Effective Use Cases, Addison-Wesley, 2000. Casual and fully dressed use cases.

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2003-2007 Construx Software Builders, Inc. All Rights Reserved .

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Requirements Toolbox Tool

Construx seminar: Requirements Boot Camp Construx seminar: Object-oriented Requirements Analysis and Design Using the UML Construx seminar: Use Cases in Depth presented by Meilir Page-Jones

2003-2007 Construx Software Builders, Inc. All Rights Reserved .

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