In the previous articles, I contribute to Mekon’s Bitesize articles on Business Rules, I mentioned about the importance of defining the business rules before signing contracts, and also about the sequence or order in business rules definition.
In the most recent article in this series, titled “Why Does It Make Sense to Generate a Business Rules Index First and a Guidance Document Second?”, I address the flow of business rules definition process in more detail, but especially the form of it.
In my opinion, it is much more sensible to have all business rules recorded as an index with all the necessary information and guidance attached to each entry, than to start with a flowing text, as it is usual for contracts and statements of work.
And above that, I think you should start with creating an index (before signing contracts) and keep it as a master knowledge base of all decisions, and then extract information out of it to create all the guides, the contracts, and statements of work.
You can find the reasons why I think so in this article here.
(Credits: Photograph ©canva.com under the keyword “format”)