Decision management and governance

Decision Center is a scalable decision management application and repository with collaborative web environments for authoring, managing, validating, and deploying decision services. In the Business console, business users can work with a ready-to-use approach to change management and governance, which is based on releases and change activities. This approach is called decision governance.

The following diagram illustrates the main tools and tasks for decision management in Decision Center.

Illustration: Decision management with Decision Center

Developers who continue to work with classic rule projects can still publish rule projects to Decision Center and manage and deploy them in the Enterprise console.

Activity	Learn more
Get started To get started with the tools and processes for decision management, follow a tutorial. To learn more about decision management in Decision Center, read its overview.	Getting started with decision services Exploring decision services in a governance workflow Overview: Decision Center
Configure For business users to manage automated decisions, you configure the projects and work environment to ensure ease of use and security. You can configure and customize the model and vocabulary that is used in the rules, and you can define permissions for different types of users. You also set up the deployment configurations. Part of the configuration can be done in Rule Designer, or in Decision Center for users with administrator privileges.	Administering Decision Center Security Customizing Decision Center Designing projects for rule authoring Sample: Business console custom value editor
Synchronize Synchronization is the link between the IT cycle and the business cycle. When the projects are ready on the IT side, you can publish them to Decision Center. When you publish a decision service, you choose whether the decision service is managed with regular branches, or with the decision governance framework in the Business console. If you publish a classic rule project, only regular branches are available to manage rules.	Synchronizing and storing rules Managing changes
Manage To manage decision services, you can use the decision governance framework, a predefined release workflow that is based on change and validation activities. You can also choose to use regular branches for a customized change management workflow. The decision governance framework is only available in the Business console.	Overview: Identifying a set of rules Managing changes Exploring decision services in a governance workflow
Author Business users can author action rules and decision tables, and Decision Center tracks versions of rules. With the decision governance framework, you must create a change activity within a release to modify rules. Policy managers and rule authors can author business rules in the Decision Center Business and Enterprise consoles. You can integrate business rule authoring and management extensions that are developed in Rule Designer into the Decision Center consoles.	Working with rules Getting started with decision services Authoring extensions for Decision Center Business rule management extensions for Decision Center
Validate Decision Center includes testing and simulation features that enable business users to validate the behavior of rules. Business users must be confident that business rules are written correctly and that any update does not break the business logic encapsulated in the ruleset. Business users validate the business logic against well-defined usage scenarios, by running tests and simulations against their rules.	Testing and simulating decisions Testing sets of rules Simulating business application results Sample: Business console simulation
Deploy Business users can deploy decision services directly from the Business console. In the context of the decision governance framework, deployment to production can happen only when all activities and the release are complete. You can set up nonproduction deployment configurations that business users can use for test purposes.	Deploying rules
Administer You administer user access and the configuration of the Decision Center database. The Decision Center database provides services that support auditing and rollback of business rules.	Administering Decision Center