business rules forum can we have a report that successful communication during br project final

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Successful Communication During a Business Rules Project

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Communications Challenges within a Business Rules Project

• Varied audience with interests in different pieces of information

• Policy and implementation decisions changes during the project

• Need to maintain rules and rule attributes in one place (efficiency and accuracy), while still providing appropriate information to all audiences in an ongoing and consistent way

• Potential of multiple systems relying on the same set of business rules


Who is our audience?• Policy Makers

• Business Application Owners

• Project Managers

• Business Analysts

• Systems Analysts

• Developers

• Testers (QA, DQM, and UAT)

• Sales/Account Managers

• Marketing/Communication

• Customers (users and management)

• Production Management

• Potentially all of the above for multiple applications that share the same business rules.


Case Studies: Two Approaches to Using DOORS for Business Rules

Loan Delivery (LD): DOORS as a repository for “final” business rules that are active in the application’s production environment. Existing application.

EarlyCheck™ (EC): DOORS as a requirements management tool for business rules as they develop during the analysis, development, testing, and eventually implementation. New application.


Before DOORSLoan Delivery (LD)


Documents to create/maintain

• Create and maintain a spreadsheet of the new and modified business rules to include in the requirements document, based on the business rules documented in a (large) MS Word® document (repository) of all the application business rules. Spreadsheet contained all the information needed by all audiences other than external customers/users.

• Create and maintain a spreadsheet of all the new and modified business rules with only the information approved for external customers/users.

• Update the MS Word document (repository) with final business rules at the end of the project/application release.


MS Word Business Rule Repository


Proprietary

MS Word Business Rule Requirement


Business Rule External Use Document


Before DOORSEarlyCheck at Origination (EC)


Documents to create/maintain

Create and maintain a multiple spreadsheets of the new business rules based on rule type and which business analysis team member was researching.


Business Rule Analysis Spreadsheets


After DOORSLoan Delivery (LD)


Loan Delivery Modules


Business Rules Layout


Data Links


Calculation and Table Links


Developers


Testers (both QA and UAT)


Testers (QA)


Communications/Sales


Customers


Production Management


After DOORSEarlyCheck (EC)


EarlyCheck Business Requirements Design in DOORS


EarlyCheck Business Rules Modules


EarlyCheck Extract Files from the Main Business Rules Module

• PDF Extract (PDF) – Included in main business requirements document for distribution to all teams and used for approvals.

• Testing Extract (Excel) – Used to upload the key fields into Quality Center.

• Message and XML Configuration Extract (tab-delimited) – Used to upload the approved messages into the application business rule message configuration file.

• LTV & CLTV Ranges Extract (tab-delimited) – Used to upload the LTV & CLTV Ranges into the application for use as message parameters and in results files.

• Government Loan Limits Extract (tab-delimited) – Used to upload the FHA and VA loan limits into the application for use as message parameters.

• Release Notes Extract (Excel) – Used to distribute the externally-approved data about the business rules via the web or emailed announcements.

• Ad Hoc Extracts (Excel or comma- or tab-delimited) – Based on requests from any team for a specific set of business rule attributes.


EarlyCheck Business Rules PDF Extract


EarlyCheck Message and XML Configuration Extract (tab-delimited)


EarlyCheck Testing Extract (Excel®)


EarlyCheck LTV & CLTV Ranges Extract (tab-delimited)


EarlyCheck Government Loan Limits Extract (tab-delimited)


EarlyCheck Release Notes Extract (Excel®)


Benefits of Using DOORS for Communicating Business Rules• Central repository means that everyone knows the definitive source

for data and information.

• Ease of creating and producing multiple reports in different formats and with different subsets of data quickly and in a repeatable way, based on the same data source means that you are communicating the right set of data for the particular audience.

• Maintaining one source of data for all the reports, so that everyone has the same value for each data point means higher degree of accuracy.

• Access control allows you to limit access to who can modify the data and who can just view data.

• Change control allows you to know who made a change and when.

• Baselining allows you to access old versions of business rules for analysis and audit purposes.