Pitfalls and Lessons Learned of Business Rules Implementation - A Management Perspective

Senior Artemis Alliance staff, drawing on their practical experience with what can go wrong from management, technical, and business analysis perspectives, provided insight into how and why business rules initiatives fail and strategies to assure the success of such initiatives.

by Michael Krouze, Artemis CTO

Significant management pitfalls include:

• Management sees the initiative as ‘only’ a technical investment or enabler, and fails to take into account ALL of the costs involved.
• Management views business rules as a tactical, single application investment, and does not see the ‘big picture’, strategic benefits.
  
• Management hasn’t bought into the value of business rules, and fails to provide consistent support.
• Management does not understand the scope of the initiative and short changes the investment.

Success Strategies
Regarding determining the costs:

• Clearly analyze all rule costs and communicate to management.
• Make sure to include the following types of costs:
• Purchases
• Culture/process change
• Education
• Implementation
• Testing
• Maintenance

Regarding the strategic benefits:

• Examine all the benefits of business rules.
• Think of business rules as a strategic tool.
• IT agility
• Management of knowledge as an asset
• Leverage the investment in tools and skills.

Regarding management support:

• Educate, review competition, review success statistics to build confidence.
• Communicate strong support.
• Don’t vacillate – make a decision and stand behind it.

Regarding not short changing the investment:

• Understand the costs.
• Recognize needs for education and/or consulting support.
• Allow for proof-of-concept work and learning curve.
• Contract for support services from vendor.

Based on Michael’s experience, shortchanging the investment and viewing a business rules initiative only as a short-term, tactical investment are the two biggest barriers to a successful project. Management must understand that a business rules initiative is strategic in nature and represents a new way to manage its business.