When you scale your business, you must know this rule
- James Stanbridge
- Aug 14, 2020
- 5 min read
Carole-Ann Matignon observes
"The human brain has a way to accumulate experience over time that turns into "know-how" that is often hard to formulate and yet plays a critical role in the quality of the decisions made. "
Driving our business ideas into reality, we learn a massive amount about our customers, our services and how to marry the two; pivots, evolutions of our business plan are exciting times, but it is exactly this 'know-how' that is created mostly 'on-the-fly' for start-ups in the earliest stages of our businesses that are much too important to leave as knowledge in our heads.
Whether we know it or not, we are creating 'Business Rules', and when it comes to any expansion, development of our business or bringing in new tools and people the need for written down Business Rules is the difference between growth and stagnation.
When I start to ask the founder, and maybe one or two other people involved in the business, perhaps suppliers or partner, even customer it becomes obvious that there are assumptions about what the business rules are, but never are these universal- the very first step in discovering the Business Rules uncovers the urgent need for them.
Business Rules definition:
So what is a business rule anyway? According to Wikipedia:
"A business rule is a rule that defines or constrains some aspect of business and always resolves to either true or false. Business rules are intended to assert business structure or to control or influence the behaviour of the business."
Ronald Ross, author of Principles of the Business Rule Approach, describes ten basic principles of the business rule approach. He believes that rules should:
• Be written and made explicit.
• Be expressed in plain language.
• Exist independent of procedures and workflows.
• Build on facts, and facts should build on concepts as represented by terms.
• Guide or influence behaviour in desired ways.
• Be motivated by identifiable and important business factors.
• Be accessible to authorized parties.
• Be single sourced.
• Be specified directly by those people who have relevant knowledge.
• Be managed.
Consequentially, I recommend the 10 step method, developed by Denise O'Berry
A Quick, Ten Step Method For Documenting Business Processes
This method would (pre-COVID) have been ideally implemented getting all the stake holders together in a room, a flip chart and loads of post it notes. Post COVID I am implementing a Google Form, with a simple shared spreadsheet behind.
Step 1 – Process Name
To get started, write down a simple name of the process along with a description.
Step 2 – Process Boundaries
Identify the start and end points of the process. What triggers the process to start? How do you know when it’s done?
Step 3 – Process Outputs
Identify what’s produced by the process.
Step 4 – Process Inputs
Identify what’s needed to perform the process and where it comes from. Some sources include: paper, excel, web.
Step 5 – Process Activities
Brainstorm the activities (what) that need to be done to get the process from start to finish. State these in a verb / object format (e.g., approve request, sign paperwork, distribute form, etc). Don’t worry about sequencing the activities at this time, just brainstorm freely. [Sticky notes can be very effective for this step. Just write one activity on each note.]
Step 6 – Process Organization
Take all the Business Rules you identified and sequence them into the process flow. Make sure you identify key decision points as you build the visual of your process.
Step 7 – Process Review
Take a look at the sequence as a first quality check. Does it look complete based on the boundaries you defined in Step 2?
Step 8 – Process Roles
Identify the roles (whom) that will be completing the activities for the process. Assign a role to each activity step.
Step 9 – Transcribe Process
Place the steps into a flowcharting software program in a swim lane format.
Step 10 – Final Process Review
Get the participants together and review the process flow. Secure approval by all team members.
As you start to build your business rule set, keep in mind the following guidance, which will help you overcome ambiguous or contradictory rules:
1: A business rule is about the how to run the business and not about a system, or set of systems. If you removed all the systems and system platforms, the rule would still important to the business operations. Business rules are about people doing business activities, to achieve business goals not interacting with systems.
2: Does the rule provide enough information for a business person to make a decision, or a series of decisions? If a business person uses the rule to make a decision, then it’s a business rule. The rule exists in order to operate the business. A business person could easily read the rule and understand how they are to conduct business.
3: Business rules are owned by the business. A business person must be able to change, or modify rules as they identify changes. For example, a rule may be that “Only people between the ages of 25-35 may open a customer account”. A system requirement could be written to support that age constraint. The rule however, is owned by the business and could be changed at any time based on business objectives.
4: A business rule must place some type of constraint or requirement on the way that business is conducted. For example, “Only customers with an approved line of credit of $1,000 or more may place orders within the corporate product catalog”. This rule shows how customers are constrained and prevented from certain operation, or activities. A system requirement might be necessary to support multiple rules which constrain customer activities. The business rules define the constraints.
Here's an example of a documented process to help you see how it all comes together:
Once you’ve received information from all your sources -- questionnaires, rules and policy documents, and work sessions – it’s important to consolidate them into one document for review by key stakeholders
Now that you have all of your business rules set, you can tackle defining the requirements that will solve that business rule in your new or evolving system.
Some of the next level review will start to add new attributes of applicability and enforcement:
Strictly enforced – There can be no violations or exceptions
Override by designated authority – Exceptions to the rule is assessed on a case-by-case basis
Override with explanation – Comments can be provided to override the rule
Not enforced – Business Rule is defined simply as a guideline to be followed
Most companies use repeatable business processes to get work done. That’s a good thing. But if those workflows aren’t written down, there are any number of things that could happen to cause breakdowns in the process and have an impact on your customers or your cash flow. That’s not a good thing.
It’s not hard to document work processes, but it does take time. The time is well worth it though because it will help you determine if the processes are efficient or if there are steps that can be eliminated or changed. And if you’re in the middle of getting ready to automate some of your work, documenting current processes are an absolute must.
Today, people are beginning to manage processes on platforms to continually improve and iterate - money is often prioritised to look and feel, user experience - the truth is that process or workflow improvement as equally important, the rule anyone looking to scale is, start with your Business Rules.
Sources used in this article:
Ronald Ross, author of Principles of the Business Rule Approach
http://www.brcommunity.com/articles.php?id=b590#biography1 Carole-Ann Matignon
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