Each organisation functions in accordance with their business policy which is made up of numerous business rules.
Where has that business policy been written down or documented? Usually it is made up of stationary documents, project specifications, and can be found in places where the business rules are physically implemented: application code, databases and similar. Each change of a business policy requires specification change, locating the areas where the specifications are implemented, modification of the application and the data in the database. Prior to starting the development of the application version, a testing process is required. Taken note of how much time is needed of noticing each minor need for a change of the business policy to implementation and the final change. It is impossible to avoid one whole iteration of the application development, from the development of the specification to testing and the installation of a new version, which includes the business and the IT department.
Direct costs of the implementation of each change of a business policy are noticeable also because there is a need of engagement of a great number of employees. Indirect costs, which are a result of a slow implementation of a change, can be even higher.
Operational Decision Management (ODM) is a discipline which motivates the development of a central repository of business rules, defines the rules of management and enables the business users to directly change the business rules.
IBM Operational Decision Manager (IBM ODM) is a platform which implements the ODM discipline and enables a fast operational change of business logic and inclusion of business users in the development, change and the management of the business rules. One feature needs to be especially mentioned and that is the simplicity of verbalization of any logic through a natural language which makes recording complex rules in a language understandable to a wider public possible. IBM ODM also provides a simple and flexible integration with other parts of the software architecture.
ODM makes possible faster iteration of implementation of the business policy avoiding the need to go through a whole cycle of development of a new version of the application.
For more information, send an email to croz-info@croz.net. We will gladly present you the full potential of the mentioned tool.
