Business Rule or Functional Requirement?
I am currently working on a Traceability Matrix (Excel Template), that begins with a "Business Rule" column. A business rule is a precise statement of intent expressed in terms like "The user must be able to..." or "The application must manage client information in accordance with...", etc. A business rule is expected to be atomic, so that only one action is possible and ambiguity is elimintated. I quote the following definition I read earlier today on a website: "Business rules can be anything your organization uses to make an operational decision. ...enterprise, divisional, corporate and line of business policies, ... calculations and formulas, risk thresholds adn regulatory authorizations."
With such a broad definition it becomes hard - at least in my mind - to distinguish clearly between business rules and functional requirements.
Sometimes the difference is pretty clear. E.g.: BR -> "The application must have filtering capabilities for modules A, B and D." FR -> "The application shall provide a "Site Name" based filtering criteria within the "Aggregate Level Services" reports in the "Reports" module."
Other times its not so clear. E.g.: BR -> "If the gender is male and the age is under 26, and the marital status is 'single' then the person is considered 'High Risk'" FR -> "If the gender is male and the age is ...".
So at times a business rule translate almost verbatum to a functional requirement; at other times it maps one-to-one to a functional requirement, and at other times a busines rule maps to more than one functional requirement.
Does this make sense - i.e. seem reasonable to everybody? And what other views exist out there? Thanks for reading and looking forward to your replies.
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Business Rules and Decision Tables
I am new to Requirements gathering in the IT space why would I look for Business Rules when I could easily construct a set of Decision Tables? Business Rule seem redundant to Decision Tables. Lets got to some of the experts for definitions. Where a business rule is defined as
Business rule (from the Software Requirements Memory Jogger) policies, guidelines, regulations, and standards that must be adhered to. When defined as analysis models, they are textual statements that define, constrain, or enable the behavior of software or business processes
and a Decision Table (from the Software Requirements Memory Jogger)
an analysis model that specifies complex business rules or logic concisely in an easy-to-read tabular format, specifying all the possible conditions and actions that need toe be accounted for in business rules.
from the definition in the Software Requirements Memory Jogger of Decision Table why would I actually care about Business rules from a system perspective I only really want to develop the Decison Table and if Business Rules are in those decisions then great. What value is there in identifying the Business Rules except for developing the Decision Table, which has a direct affect on the System under development.
Maybe someone needs to explain to me what the purpose of a BA is. Is a BA to improve the Business process or improve the IT systems that enables the Business process. If it is to improve the Business then Business Rule would work best. If a BA is for improving the IT to enable Business then Decision Tables are the best.
Maybe I am confusing the need and solution. What do you think?