Defining Business Rules ~ What Are They Really?

The Business Rules Group began as a project team within the user group, GUIDE International.  Our initial focus was on business rules that could be implemented directly in information technology — the kinds of rules that would be defined formally in specifications of the information system (that is, 'Row 3' of the Zachman Framework).  Our first report was published as a GUIDE project publication in 1995 and then revised as the first publication of the Business Rules Group in 1997.  A subsequent update was published by the BRG in 2000, reflecting practitioner feedback.

The BRG's original ('classic') Business Rules paper

In the 1980s, we worked on business rule-related topics as a series of projects of the GUIDE user group organization.  In that setting we published our original 'white paper' on business rules, Defining Business Rules ~ What Are They Really? 

This paper (in its third edition and published under the authorship of the BRG) describes a scheme for understanding the nature of business rules and the categories into which they fall.  It presents a formal approach for identifying and articulating the rules that define the structure and control the operation of an enterprise.

Abstract

Systems analysts have long been able to describe enterprises in terms of the structure of the data those enterprises use and the organization of the functions they perform, but have tended to neglect the constraints under which the enterprise operates.  Frequently these are not articulated until it is time to convert them into program code.  While rules which are represented by the structure and functions of an enterprise have been documented to a degree, others have not been articulated as well, if at all.

After sponsoring several work activities and speaker sessions on the topic of 'business rules' throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, the GUIDE Business Rules Project was chartered in November 1993 to author a more formal definition of what a 'business rule' actually is to the business.  This paper — the original report of the GUIDE Business Rules Project (now the Business Rules Group) — describes a scheme for understanding the nature of business rules and the categories into which they fall.  It presents a formal approach for identifying and articulating the rules that define the structure and control the operation of an enterprise.

This classic document is available in PDF format.

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