Wednesday, June 26, 2002

Business Rules versus Requirements, That Is The Question Here's my latest post to the RUP Forum... This may seem like a simple, novice question...I guess I feel that way sometimes... I'm having a hard time understanding the difference between a business rule and a requirement (functional or other). Can someone point me in a direction or with examples to clarify this? Is there a type of thing being documented as a business rule versus a functional requirement? Is there a specific type of syntax that is used or differentiates a business rule from a requirement? When are business rules collected and what do they lead to (use case names, other requirements, etc.)? Thanks for help (and this forum has given me plenty of help and things to think about daily)...VO [Later...got some interesting responses...which you can't see yet because of the forum's archaic browsing scheme which I've already ranted about.] comment []  3:53:19 PM

Don't Call My Preference A Constraint! Paul Oldfield in the RUP Forum... "Sometimes the customer does ask for certain features that are really design decisions, and I prefer to denote these requirements as 'Design Preference' as I record them (so I can sidestep analysis of them, but they come back into consideration during design). Sometimes the customer asks for things he doesn't really need - it's useful to be aware of these requests in case they start adding a lot of extra expense." Amen! I sure like the name 'Design Preference' as opposed to the term we use in our SRS: 'Design Constraint'. I'd bet that our customers would like it better also. comment []  3:17:16 PM

ThinkMedia Blogrolls VO's Tech News "Welcome to my new weblog... If you are interested in the business aspects of enterprise XML infrastructure and inter-operability, please visit regularly and communicate with me. I am just getting the Thinkmedia weblog off the ground and hope in time it can become a great resource." Will's blog looks like it's going to cover some things that I'm covering in my Vince Outlaw's Tech News blog. Looks like we might have a community going on here! I don't believe anyone's blogrolled me before. Thanks Will! BTW, VO's Tech News serves a dual purpose for me. It gives folks that are interested in my tech take a place to go without all that other gall-darned New Jazz Stuff getting in the way (my main blog gets it all in it's attention deficit glory). AND I use the VO Tech News RSS feed to feed my intranet blog using the Multi-Author Weblog Tool. I post to my home copy of Radio (over the internet, no less), route tech stuff to VO Tech News, and my copy of Radio at work (intranet) subscribes to it and posts it to my intranet blog (iBlog) using Multi-Author. Single post, multiple publish. And I'm building a resume of tech knowledge both inside and outside. Don't tell anyone... comment []  2:35:37 PM