Each step of the rule development lifecycle requires specific skills that are held by
different users. The roles of the users must be assigned at the outset of a project.
Decision Server Rules and Decision Center
Together, Decision Server Rules and Decision Center provide a comprehensive decision
management environment. The following figure shows the various development roles and their places in
the management environment.
The roles can be broken down into two categories:
- IT users
- The architects, developers, and administrators who develop and maintain the rule
application.
- Business users
- The business analysts, policy managers, and rule authors who develop and maintain the decision
logic.
The following table lists the different types of IT and business users.
Table 1. User roles for the development of business rule applications
| Role |
Activities |
Description |
|
|
Architects work mainly in Decision Server to
do the following tasks:
- Define the decision services and their interface with the calling applications.
- Define the project organization for the developers and business users. For example, they set up
the data model for the rule vocabulary.
- Optimize rule execution.
|
|
- Design
- Author
- Test
- Integrate
- Deploy
|
Developers know the object models, APIs, and the development environment. They work mainly in
Decision Server to do the following tasks:
- Develop, test, debug, and deploy decision services. They contribute to the design of the rules.
- Define the client execution code to integrate decision services in to business applications.
|
 |
- Design
- Author
- Test
- Synchronize
- Manage
- Validate
|
Business analysts work with business and IT departments, from design to integration of a software
application. They work in Decision Server and
Decision Center to do the following tasks:
- Design a formal specification for the rules, with validation from both developers and policy
managers.
- Define the vocabulary for the rules.
- Identify candidate business rules.
- Write and organize business rules so that rule authors can maintain them.
- Validate rules to make sure they produce the expected results.
Business analysts can share tasks with developers, but typically they do not write code.
|
|
|
Policy managers own the decisions within an organization. They work mainly in Decision Center to do the following tasks:
- Participate in the design of a formal specification for the rules.
- Define vocabulary elements with the help of business analysts.
- Manage releases and validation activities in the context of decision governance.
- Create and update rules.
- Review how the running of rules is orchestrated.
- Report on the status of the decisions.
- Test rules to ensure that they provide the intended business outcome.
- Run simulations to assess the potential impact of changes to rules.
|
 |
|
Rule authors work in Decision Center to do the
following tasks:
- Update and sometimes create rules.
- Review business rules.
- Create change activities in the context of decision governance.
|
