This morning was special, as I woke up as an IBMer. No, no sign of my skin or clothes turning to blue, of course! From the due diligence last July, the formal announcement, the two offers to tender ILOG shares, the on boarding, blue-rinsing and blue-washing processes, it has been a progressive and continuous move [...]
Ready, Set, Test!
Posted by Pierre Berlandier on January 12th, 2009After several iterations of intensive analysis, business modeling, agile rule writing and meticulous ruleset testing, your BRMS application is finally ready for prime time and just got deployed to production. So, quickly give yourself a pat in the back, and get ready to move on to some real testing action!
Because, while BRMS technology certainly [...]
Joe, the Rules Plumber
Posted by Pierre Berlandier on November 12th, 2008It sounded that “Putting the business rules in the hands of the business people” was still one of the most popular mantra at the 2008 Business Rules Forum, a bit like a recurring vow from a political stump speech.
Here are some candid questions about this catch phrase that I would like to explore: Who exactly [...]
The Estimate Game
Posted by Pierre Berlandier on September 24th, 2008To the question: “How long will it take for one of your Rule Analysts along with one of my SMEs to harvest and implement about 500 business rules?”, the straight answer, from the top of my head is: “Between 6 and 8 weeks!”
Since there is no sense of doubt or hesitation here, you may be [...]
More on Intelligent tracking
Posted by Maurice Schlumberger on August 4th, 2008A previous blog entry introduced the notion of tracking the position and speed of a software engagement rather than only the position. This post focuses on lessons one can learn from tracking the speed, and how this concept and some associated tools can be a very powerful help in Project Management.
While the position, or progress, of a [...]
Intelligent tracking
Posted by Maurice Schlumberger on June 24th, 2008Software lore is rife with Project Management analogies. One of my favorite compares tracking a software project to navigating the ocean by dead reckoning. Two commonalities emerge:
if you don’t know where you go, you don’t know when you get to your destination, and
if you don’t track your progress, you don’t know which way you are [...]
Agile vs. rigid software development
Posted by Julio Perez on June 19th, 2008Like for a front page article in a newspaper, the key challenge when posting on a blog is to find the right title. What is the opposite of agile? Looking at antonyms, you will find terms such as awkward, clumsy or stiff. They do not seem appropriate opposite terms for what this post is about: agile software development. [...]
Design patterns and ISIS
Posted by Julio Perez on May 28th, 2008Design patterns have been around for quite some time already but have we really paid enough attention to them?
In software design, a design pattern is a proven and reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in a determined context.
The idea behind design patterns comes from Christopher Alexander’s book, A Pattern Language (1977), which talks about [...]
Do you know your business policy change templates?
Posted by Pierre Berlandier on May 20th, 2008Discovering and analyzing your business policy change templates is one of the several key aspects documented in the ISIS methodology, and that must be addressed as part of defining your Rule Governance processes.
The reason why a BRMS component is brought to a company’s IT application mix is because it facilitates the implementation of decision services, [...]
What is specific about decisioning?
Posted by Jean Pommier on May 15th, 2008I was invited to share some of our experience at the Informs Practice conference in Baltimore last month, more specifically on our methodology work to support successful implementations of decisioning systems.
Informs Practice is one of two annual conferences of Informs, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. A group extremely vested in building strategic [...]