Tracking Business Rules from Their Source to Their Implementation to Support is Maintenance

Abstract

Business rules describe how organisations are doing business. Their value has also been recognised within the information system (IS) domain, mostly because of their ability to make applications flexible and amenable to change. In this paper we argue that business rules can be used as a link between organisations and their ISs. We show that business rules originate in organisations and that many business rules are explicitly or implicitly captured in enterprise models. We advocate, based on research work, that if business rules are managed in an appropriate manner they can help keeping IS aligned and consistent with the business environment. In the paper we propose a business rule management scenario for managing business rules from an organisational perspective. The scenario recognises business rule management as an interface between enterprise modelling and IS development and maintenance.