Links
Thanks to everyone for a great meeting! We got off to a great start. We
discussed many good ideas at the kickoff meeting of the Business Rule Experts
Group/Dallas Rules Group on Sept. 3rd:
We’re not exactly sure what we want to do yet, but we agreed that we want to do
something to benefit the rules industry and all companies using rule
engines. The group volunteered to work on projects that deliver something
valuable to business. Like creating case studies, best practices, lessons
learned, templates, etc. for rulebased projects. And of course it would all be
vendor-neutral, so our templates could be used by any company as guides to help
them (1) get started using the rules approach and (2) succeed with rules (3) and
leverage the power of rules using advanced techniques and methods.
There was an open group discussion that got everyone involved in the
conversation. Everyone was excited and volunteered to move forward with this
idea even though we don’t know yet exactly what we’re going to do. Everyone
agreed to bring a few ideas on what projects we can work on to the next meeting.
Then we’ll decide what project we want to work on first.
Our goal for the October 1st meeting is to decide what the rules working
group/user group plans to accomplish first. Looking forward to seeing you there.
Below are rough/unedited notes from the meeting. Anyone know
how to automatically transcribe the audio?
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Thank you for coming to the first BRxG DRG user group
meeting
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Welcome from IBM, our meeting host
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IBM team
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Jeff
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Steven
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Peggy -
Program Mgr
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Rolando
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Briefing slides / presentation on:
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About AA, BRxG, DRG
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Why do we need
DRG
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Begin group discussion:
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what do we want to put into DRG, and get out of DRG?
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Greg
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We need good Ideas for talking to the business
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James
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Split into 3 groups
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Would be great to get
Larry teaching
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JCO was once part of
a similar UG that split into an advanced group and a beginner group
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Jim
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Newbie
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Joe Buchta
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.
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Business people care
more about flexibility, not Rete
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Their problems
required agility, not Rete
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Gb: the whole point of using BRE is handling complexity
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For simple examples you really don’t need rules
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Lindsey
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Re-positioning the team
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The team does all 3 roles
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Rh
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Do you still need to get buy-in from the business
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Lindsey - out of
~800+ people in IT, maybe ~2% of the apps are in rules today
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Joel
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My job is to bridge the gap between IT and business
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Not usually coding
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My job is to select
technology for the company
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I have to understand
the technology, even though I am not coding; I need to understand the
techn. So I can communicate with my developers
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Larry
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As a consultant, I am involved in all 3 roles
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Training
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Middle-ground,
they have the arch, a big project
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On most of my
projects, it's not that we choose rete… most of these projects can
be done in jave
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But get agility, flexibility, etc
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Get ability
to get non-programmers involved in writing rules
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On most projects, the goal
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Is liberating the business logic and getting it into
the hands of the business
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Lindsey : we now have word nimble in our new mission
stmt
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Buchta: that’s
why we see financial companies using rules
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Joel
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Say I have rules that apply to multiple depts
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Whats' a good strategy to get these rules:
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Efficiently
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And not
redundantly
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So I'd like to learn what works and what doesn’t work
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Jco
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Ned info on
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How to explain rules to mgmt
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Ken
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I Liked the path Greg took on a hypothetical business
case
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Case on bus company
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We can learn from
that
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James
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Why not combine Greg's idea + invite business people
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Ken
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I think sustaining 1 group has proven too difficult, 3
is too ambitious for now for starters
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Just having 1 group
succeed would be huge
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Rh
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Why r u here
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Ken - because we're geeks
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Joel
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A twist on James idea
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Work on an open-source case… a realistic rules
development project for say a fictitious company
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Rolo
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Why not form a WORKING GROUP to create open source rules
projct deliverables, such as
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BR job descriptions
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.
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I have some public rules form a client that are now
"public"
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Jco
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I worked on an open source project that created
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BR job descriptions
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Other docs such
as reusable templates
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DELIVERABLE
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THE JOB DESCRIPTIONS
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What are the best job skills/criteria to look for for
hiring BR project team
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A SAMPLE PROJECT, LIKE GREG'S BUS COMPANY EXAMPLE
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Lindsey
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One ting that would draw me in, was if we ad a REAL GOOD
EXAMPLE, of how I use rules technolgo,
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How technology fit the problem
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Ho the design fit
that
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How the
technology was applied
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Someone from my
business community might be interested to see how they could use it
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USE A CASE STUDY
TYPE APROACH where rules where successfully applied
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Say a motor / mfg / services company, or a particular
problem
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I did build ES so I have that experience
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I NEED ……
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JCO
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We need a business expert
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Ken
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…
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Joe
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It cant be a 3hr talk on a topic, by a presenter or
vendor etc. how boring
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Greg
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Hybrid approach
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One mtng where we
design the case study
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Rolo
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THE CASE STUDY WE NEED IS IN THE WALL SREET JOURNAL
EVERY DAY
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Buchta
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…
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Start at the top
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Begin with Rule
harvesting
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Jco
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Even the BRE vendors don’t really care about Rete
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It's all about
solving complex problems
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Lindsey
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If we can create something open , we can use that at
southwest
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1 question, I want to
answer
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Are we trying to become better at solving business
problems?
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Or trying to
build BR systems better?
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The answer is
===> BOTH!!
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Greg
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I like the idea of over 2-3 mtngs, define a case
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Rolo
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That works, also supports new people coming n at step 3
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Lindsey
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Suppose we all bring 2-3 cases
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Buchta
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When u build a bridge its from point a to b
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Building sw is never
like that
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Greg
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For the next mtng, get to come up with 4-5 potential
case studies
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Focused on
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Complexity
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Agility
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END PRODUCT
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BASIC DELIVERABLES
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PART 1
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HOW TO APPROACH BUSINESS, MGMT, SMEs
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PART 2
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HOW TO START DESIGNING THE RULEBASE
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LINDSEY
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WE SHOULD FIRST AGREE ON WHAT WOULD BE IN A FINAL
PRODUCT
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GREG: LETS FOLLOW Zachman that were outlined in the
slides
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ROLO: I CAN DO
RULE HARVESTING SESSIONS for the selected case and show you ways to
extract rules from the business/SME
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ROLO: WE TAKE THIS CASE STUDY ON THE ROAD,
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TO EVANGELIZE RULES
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USING THIS CASE STUDY
AS an example of a successful rules case study
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GREG/JAMES: AFGTER 2-3 ITERATIONS,
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In a year, I think we can become like a university
lab/research center that companies goto to solve tough problems,
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GREG
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I think well after 12 mths or so we will be at that
stage where we would be ready to take on that type of project challenge
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WRAP
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We can do this to
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create deliverables that could be used by companies to
showcase what a rulebase approach can solve for them
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To learn from the
experience and gain new skills
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To add an "open"
project that is public that we can add to our resume
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To learn from
this… and have fun doing it