Roles and activities

Operational Decision Manager comprises a set of modules that operate in different environments. Each step of the development lifecycle requires a specific set of skills and these activities can be divided into different users or roles. Roles within the team must be established early on in the development cycle.

Decision Server Rules and Decision Center work together to provide a comprehensive decision management environment. The following figure shows the various activities that are involved and where each activity is carried out.

Two categories of users are involved in developing and maintaining a decision management solution:

IT users: Architects, developers, and administrators develop and maintain the decision services.
Business users: Business analysts, policy managers, and rule authors develop and maintain the decision logic.

The following table describes the different types of IT and business users that are involved in developing and maintaining a decision management solution.

Table 1. User roles for the development of business rule applications
Role	Activities	Description
	Design Integrate Deploy	Architects work mainly in Decision Server and have the following responsibilities: Defining the granularity of the decision services and their interface with the calling applications. Defining the project organization so that it is convenient for developers and business users alike. In particular, they are responsible for setting up the data model (XOM) that is used as the rules vocabulary. Making sure that rule execution is optimized.
	Design Author Test Integrate Deploy	Developers are familiar with object models, APIs, and the development environment (Jakarta EE application servers, Java™ SE). They work mainly in Decision Server and have the following responsibilities: Developing, testing, debugging, and deploying decision services. They provide input to the design of the rules. Integrating decision services into business applications, by defining the client execution code.
	Deploy Administer Monitor Audit	System administrators work on the servers to ensure that they run smoothly. These servers can be for Decision Center or Decision Server. Administrators have the following responsibilities: Deploying and configuring the server and database for Decision Center and Rule Execution Server. Managing user access to Decision Center and Rule Execution Server. Managing the overall deployment organization of decision services, by ensuring that the decision services can be shared across environments, and redeploying decision services as changes are made. Configuring trace data sources for testing purposes. Deploying applications, and restoring a particular application state. Tracking and monitoring rule execution, by generating detailed execution reports.
	Design Author Test Synchronize Manage Validate	Business analysts act as the bridge between business and IT departments, from design to integration inside a software application. They work in Decision Server and Decision Center. Business analysts have the following responsibilities: Designing a formal specification for the rules, with validation from both developers and policy managers. Defining the vocabulary that is used in rules. Identifying candidate business rules. Writing and organizing business rules so that rule authors can maintain them. Validating that rule execution yields the expected results. Depending on their level of technical knowledge, business analysts can do tasks that are currently described as developer tasks. However, business analysts generally do not write code.
	Manage Validate Author	Policy managers are the owners of the decisions within an organization and work mainly in Decision Center. Policy managers have the following responsibilities: Participating in the design of a formal specification for the rules. Defining vocabulary elements with the help of business analysts. Managing releases and validation activities in the context of decision governance. Creating and updating rules. Reviewing how the execution of rules is orchestrated. Reporting on the status of the decisions. Testing rules to ensure that the rules give the intended business outcome. Running simulations to assess potential impact of changes to rules.
	Author	Rule authors work in Decision Center, and have the following responsibilities: Updating and sometimes creating rules. Reviewing business rules. Creating change activities in the context of decision governance.