When you are assigned a complex project that has a short timeframe (as often happens), it can be nerve wracking - I know this from experience. It's like driving a racing car - you have to push close to the limits but any error can throw you completely off the track.
How far can you take requirements elicitation in a project? Clearly, no one knows the ultimate answer. It would be very costly (if even possible) to capture all requirements, assumptions, rules, relationships, and hidden connections associated with a solution being built, so how do we know when we are done?
As I look back on the last nine years of my BA career, I realize just how well that initial reason for leaving the call center, that desire to make a difference for my customers, has served as a guiding light for me as a BA. Providing my customers with tools and processes that anticipate problems they may have has been a goal throughout my years as a BA.
Many IT professionals currently prefer the if-then form for expressing rules. Why? Put simply, it's closer to what they need for implementation, whether under a rule engine or a programming language. Consequently, they often resist expressions of rules from the business perspective as business people would naturally prefer them. But what effect does that have on the rules?
As business analysts, we know that a business process model is a crucial technique for transforming a business and redesigning automated business systems. Yet, we struggle with the best way to represent the business rules that guide it. This is not a surprise, but disappointing. Ironically, business rules may be the most important dimension of an enterprise. They are the core of business decisions and actions, whether automated or not. How do we treat them today?
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