I was recently asked the question above. It’s a good one. It arose in response to another post, “What is the best way to simplify business process models?”. See http://goo.gl/gWnO0 for a very brief, very dramatic case study.

Here’s my answer. Business people (and business analysts) should see only the core set of transforms (business tasks) that respond to some business event, and that lead transform-by-transform to appropriate business end-results through conditional flows.

In football, when a referee throws a flag, the results of the most recent transform (play) are undone. In effect, by enforcing a rule, the referee prevents or negates the new state (yardline and sometimes the down) and enforces some other state. That’s the way behavioral business rules[1] work. Speed through a school zone and see if your desired state isn’t modified if some policeman happens to be watching.