Services are the building blocks of SOA, and like building blocks of a house or a building, the quality will define the value of the finished product. In this case, the SOA itself. Thus, spending...

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"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent,

but the one most responsive to change," said Charles Darwin.

In the business world today, business rules are the atoms of change. A business rule is the smallest piece of business logic that is whole, making some sense by itself. Deployed carefully, rules can change a business in predictable and surprising ways.

Most people agree that business rules are business assets, some of which are automated in legacy or modern-day technology. Typically, the journey of a business rule from business context to automated systems involves the specification of requirements that morph through technical disciplines into programmed logic. The journey is often arduous, and if it goes too long or loses its way, the rules grow old and lose their power.

The Question

So, what does the question mean: can the business rule, can business people create rules? By providing structure and simple techniques, business people can take the driver's seat, using business rules to launch new futures for the business. There are organizations where business leaders have taken back the business rules. These activities lead to a new way of running the business:

The business rules process begins with the business people who set the rules and ends with the business people who measure results and start the business rules process again. IT is strategically in the middle, enabling it all to happen smoothly, as it should.

The state of a business is partly what happens to it and mostly how it guides its response to what happens through rules. Thus, it makes sense that the business can and should rule.

Barbara von Halle is the founder of Knowledge Partners, Inc. (KPI), which provides licensed intellectual property (methods and software) for leading clients through successful business rules projects. A pioneer in business rules, von Halle received the Outstanding Individual Achievement Award from the International Data Management Association in 1996. She also co-authored the best-selling book for business rule practitioners, Business Rules Applied (2002: John Wiley & Sons).

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