Last week I’ve shared with you one possible way how to define different types of business rules. This week I would like to address the management aspect of business rules.

If all the other types of business rules are mostly about the product or service and its state inside its life-cycle, the management business rules are about people.

Q: Who is going to be involved into the project (project being anything targeted to bring our product/service into existence)? Please note: you need to answer this question both on organizational (company) and personal levels.

Q: What are the responsibilities of each organization/company/team/person? What do they have to deliver, in what state, when, how often, etc.?

Q: What do the partners in the project need to correspond to their responsibilities? What do you have to provide to them that your collaboration gives results? Are any delays expected? Should you plan for possible delays?

Q: Do you have a plan B if someone cannot keep the given promise? Do you know whom you could address on a short notice to fulfil the task of your initial partner?

Q: How often do you and your partners in the project have to exchange the data, parts of product, etc., to reach your goals? What are the criteria for these types of exchanges?

For example, in S1000D and other environments for technical data, the frequency of data updates differs for simple editorial changes and technical changes which might affect life and health of the user, or damage the product. This particular decision will link to another type of business rules where you would need to decide what editorial or minor changes are. That would be the Quality Assurance rules, and in our definition of business rules types this can be found in decisions made upon the production and sustainment process of the given product or service.

You might come up with more questions you need to answer when you think about building internal and external teams to partner in creating the product/service you have in mind.

The easiest way to identify those questions is when they relate to a human being and his or her role in your project.

I would strongly recommend that you find the vital members of your team before you start making any further decisions on your product or service. Ask them if they want to work with you and if they have time.

And before I say goodbye to you for today, let me remind you that the customer, the end-user of your product, or a person who will use your service, must be considered as a part of this team. You might also want to get this person, or a person who represents your customers, to look through your business rules, and give their good advice on the feasibility of your product or service. Or at the very least you should be willing to listen to your first customers and realize that they are the testers of your product (if you didn’t have any before the launch of your product or service). These testers will help you improve your product or service to the quality and having features strongly searched for and not always found.

This post is a part of “Business rules: General”, copyright © 2015-2016 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

After the last week’s post on business rules you might say, “OK, so now I know that I have to be kind to my customer and know how to identify that gap between what my customer wants and what I have to offer. But what exactly do I have to decide upon? What types of decisions are there to　make　so that　my products　and services　are as desired, both by customer and by me?”

“Ah,” I answer. “We need to talk about various business rules types.”

There are many different ways how to categorize business rules. Probably as many as there are people on Earth. Or even more, because every one of us might define several of each type. Yes, there are probably no definitions of business rule types　carved in stone. Because you can group all those aspects on the product/service’s details simply as you like.

But I guess this answer　won’t help you.

S1000D® (International specification for technical publications), to which I will be referencing now and　again in these posts,　offers ten categories with specific titles and often specific for S1000D purposes.

Since you are my customer for this information and your main requirement is that I explain this using the simplest terms possible, I decided to search for a method that will give you a clue to the most important issues to be taken into account.

I like puzzles where in a word, each letter stands for another word. I searched for a word that would contain M for Management, U for Use and P for Produce. The first that came to my mind was MANIPULATE.

In the next moment I thought, “I don’t like this word. It has some negativity to it.” But then I realized that it was my personal perception of it, with some colouring of the cultures I grew up in and was exposed to.

Technically speaking, to manipulate means first and foremost “To move, arrange, operate, or control by the hands or another body part or by mechanical means, especially in a skilful manner” (The Free Dictionary). Only in its second meaning it has to do with influencing someone having bad intentions.

So, let’ use the first meaning of the word “manipulate”, that is, skilfully arrange and control the life-cycle of your product or services.

A short comment on the life-cycle. This term is used to denominate to whole process from the idea, to implementation, through production, use, over to termination of the production and elimination (or often also called re-cycling) of the old products.

Let’s see what activities emerge from each of the letters of the word manipulate, when we think about products and/or services.

M – Manage

A – Acquire

N – Navigate

I – Implement

P – Produce

U – Use

L – Legalize

A – Attract

T – Terminate

E – Execute

I will address each of these activities in a separate post. I intend to do it by offering you a set of questions,　which by answering them will give you an idea what you need to do so that your product or service is a success.

Here is a short overview.

M – Manage

This is often neglected, but you need know who is involved in your project and who is doing what.

For example, if you are a writer, will you have an external editor and cover designer? If you are a technical publication manager, will your department manage creation of the whole documentation or will you have some suppliers? And what are the roles within your department?

Both internally and externally, the management is very important. You need to know if your editor, cover designer, data (or　any other goods)　supplier would have time　to work for you when you need it. And you need to know if they are willing to work with you at all.

You also need to know how,　how often and according to which criteria you have to interact with your partners and your customers in respect to your products and services. This is especially important about information updates, renewals of parts,　etc.

Don’t take this task too easily. It can fire back. Define your project management team and who is going to do what and when. This needs to be clarified both　 internally and externally.

As soon as you know your team, you would need to know their requirements to fulfill the task they are responsible for.

Remember, it is your product, so you are fully responsible for it. Even if your supplier is fully responsible for his or her part, you can’t outsource responsibility. And you wouldn’t want to. If you outsource responsibility, you outsource control.

A – Acquire

This is related to the Management category, but not completely. You need to know what you have to purchase for your product or service. Both in terms of other services, but of course also of material. Even in case of non-tangible materials (like files or information), you need to decide what it is, and how you can provide for their continuous flow.

But remember: business rules are also in a way plans how you are going to do something. And plans never go exactly as they are set up. So you need to be resourceful if your initial idea of the source doesn’t work. You have to be ready to find a substitute quick. Otherwise, no chance of your product to be on demand.

N – Navigate

How easy it is to find a way to use your product? Did you provide all the accompanying information necessary? Or does the customer stay in front of your fancy vacuum cleaner and searches for a button to start it, whereas she just has to shout out　“Start vacuuming!”?

I – Implement

What do you need to implement all your great ideas? You might have all the materials in place, the team is ready and keen to start, but nobody knows were to start. For example, in an S1000D project, before starting any coding in XML and filling all those tags with sophisticated technical terms about your product, you need to draw a tree. Yes, a tree, a structure of your product. Of the technical publication you want to produce. Each leaf being a bundle of reusable data, also named a data module.

And this would be true for any product or service.

In other words, here you define a mind map of how to start the　fabrication or creation process for your product or how you roll out your service.

P – Produce

These rules are about the production process and/or how your service functions. You can think here of flow charts. This is different from the implementation mind maps above. Because those are meant to ignite and roll out the process. As soon as you went through those procedures, you forget about them, unless you introduce a new product or service, or a new aspect to the current product.

The production business rules are about repeatable processes as long as the product is on sale. And they include the quality assurance procedures.

U – Use

This is about the rules that the customer, the end-user of your product needs to follow in order it to function correctly and for as long as possible.

Do you remember that commercial I mentioned in the last post, when a gentleman used an smart tablet for chopping vegetables? Well, it worked wonderfully as a chopping board, but I doubt it would work as a TV afterwards.

So, you need to define the purpose of the product use. In other words, what it is good for and also the terms or conditions of its use. Including the caution not to drop your tablet too many times on a tiled floor and not to use it under a pouring rain.

L – Legalize

There are two aspects to this type of business rules. First is　connected directly to your product. Such as copyright, patents and other.

And then it is about legalization of the business rules themselves. It can be either in form of a contract between the producing companies and also the users (the contract is　one of integral parts of your business rules!)　or simple agreement between you and your spouse, who reads and edits your novel, like in case of some renowned writers. You need to be sure that he or she doesn’t concentrate solely on changing the character names while reading and critiquing your novel.

A – Attract

However much we try to say, “Only the inside matters”, your product or service needs to be attractive to your customer　and easy to use. I doubt that your motivational app will find many affected fans, if its background is all black and each new screen has a skull glaring at you.

T – Terminate

Nothing is eternal. Except eternity itself.

And so your product or service will have to go one day and be replaced with a fresh and radiant successor. You have to set up criteria, when this will be the case. And you have to decide (sooner or later) how you want to let your customers know about it. You have to warn them in advance and make sure that they don’t suffer tremendous challenges because of you giving up on a certain product or service.

Another question here is how do you re-cycle your old products or services? Yes, your services needs re-cycling too. There are too many empty sites on the web, which lead to nowhere. And if you still want to be in business that you are (or at all), you want to make sure that none of the sites you offer have a dead end.

I like the comment which sometimes appears under the 404 Error when as page is not found on the Internet, “Somewhat embarrassing, isn’t it?”

Well, yes, this can happen to anyone.

In Russian the words for embarrassing are “ne udobno”, which also means uncomfortable. Which is true, we are never comfortable when being embarrassed.　A friend of mine in Moldova　used to say, “The only embarrassing (uncomfortable) thing is to sleep on a ceiling. The duvet keeps falling down.”

Yes, you don’t need to feel embarrassed for what might seem in retrospect not exactly right.　But you better　offer your customer a stapler to make that duvet stay in place.

E – Execute

The business rules types in this guide are defined in such a way that you can define them sequentially, from M to E in the word “MANIPULATE”. From Management to Execute. Of course you need to verify and adjust the documents on the preceding types as you move to the next.

This last business rules type is where you tie it all up together. You verify whether you can start your production or service, or introduce the new branch to your company.

Here you decide whether you have the necessary minimum to start a reliable implementation and production processes. Of course, you don’t have to and you can’t define everything before you start production or launch your service. But you have to have minimum at hand. And you need a plan (including the time table) of how you will achieve both reliable production/service and further development of business rules in parallel to it. Remember that the update of the business rules must be a part of your normal product’s/service’s fabrication/creation and sustainment routine.

And as soon as you think that you are ready, you go out there in your town, or on Internet, and push the button of your production line or cut the red ribbon of your shop front.

This post is a part of “Business rules: General”, copyright © 2015-2016 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

Questions to the picture: How would you compare these two pine trees? If these were two sisters, how would you compare them?

Did I attract your attention with the title of this post? Or with the caption to the picture above?

I hope so.

But in fact, I can’t quite figure a better way to briefly express what I am going to discuss today than to say, “Compare, and don’t … compare.”

But let me take it step-by-step.

Last time I shared with you how I discovered the meaning of business rules and with that I gave you a simple definition for this concept.

Disclaimer: At this point, I should emphasize that what I share in these posts is not exhaustive information on business rules. Neither is this supposed to agree or disagree with the definitions and material, which can be found, in already available text- and guidebooks on business rules. This material is based on my experience in a business and industries’ area where business rules are essential and where sometimes the smallest deviations and disagreements with them can lead to considerable delays and expenses.

Having said that, let me repeat, in similar words as last time, what I think business rules are.

Business rules are about products (and/or services). These are the decisions taken and agreed upon by the producing company and their partners, and directly or indirectly also by their customers, on how a certain product or service is created, maintained, used, discarded, etc. When respected, these rules help to guarantee high quality and longevity of the given product.

(Suggestion: for simplicity’s sake, let us embrace both concrete products and services with the word “product” or “products” .)

Today we will take a step closer to making those necessary decisions.

In order to identify what decisions need to be made, you have to consider your customer requirements and also analyse what you have available to fulfil the task.

And then you compare.

Let’s stop here a little.

I would like to bring up a paradox, which as soon as you read it, will cause your brows raising. Or at least it did, as soon as the contemplation on today’s post topic led me to this conclusion.

The comparison, you make, should be both detached and personal.

Let me explain how I came to this conclusion.

When you consider the product, for example when you suggest to replace a product the customer has with the product you offer, then the comparison should be detached.

Let’s take an example. Here are two numbers: 5 (five) and 3 (three).

How could we compare them?

One method, which we learned at school is, “If we subtract 3 from 5, we get 2. So they differ with 2. Or if we divide 5 by 3 then we get 1.666666…”

Another way to compare them, is to say, “Five is better, because it’s more.”

And this is the way you better don’t go when you look at the customer needs and what you can offer. If, of course, you want to sell your product to this customer.

But strangely enough, this kind of comparison is one of the most common. Also when the product is as large and as complex as an airplane.

I like how this detached way of considering is described in German. The word for it is “sachlich”. Here are a few of the possible translations I found for “sachlich”: businesslike, factual, and objective. The root of “sachlich” is the word “Sache” = thing, so we could say that this means looking at things for what they are, things.

But when you consider customer needs, then you need to be compassionate and interested in the personal needs of the customer. Even if the customer is a company.

You might say, “Wait a minute, but shouldn’t I also consider my own needs. I am here to earn money for my and my employees’ living, and you tell me to put my focus on the customer.”

Yes, I do think that you should put your focus on your customer. Because this will show you the way to go, which will be satisfactory for both.

I have to smile now how not too long ago I tried to convince my former managers that employees should come first before the customers. Especially when deadlines became a bit too tough. My reasoning was following the principle: Family first, then the others.

But what I neglected then and understand now, was the fact that the customer makes a part of this “family”.

Just like in a traditional family, there are here providers and consumers. In a traditional family, parents earn the money for living, and together with children they consume them.

In a commercial “family” there are two ways of provision and consumption: the customers provide for financial needs and the producers consume them. The producers provide products and services for the customers to consume.

Of course, I simplify these mechanisms here, both how they occur in a family and in business. But the main point is that when you compare the customer requirements and what you can offer, then do it as you would do it ideally in a family. Without judgment.

Let’s take the example I brought up in the caption of the picture above. If you have two daughters and ask yourself what necessary school items to buy for them, you wouldn’t say, “Eve is older than Mary, so she deserves a more expensive schoolbag than her sister.”

As a good parent, you would probably consider the age of the girls, how tall and strong they are, in order to choose the proper size. And then you will ask each of them for their color and style preferences. After considering how much money you can spend on two schoolbags, you choose a shop and buy the bags. You might also take the girls with you to perform the purchase.

The same way is the best when you talk to your customer. Personal and non-judgmental.

Let me introduce you to the top three solutions how to find out the delta between customer requirements and what you can offer right on the spot. This delta will give you a hint what will have to be done (find the bags that the girls need and like) and what requirement better to be forgotten (one thousand pink and green little dragons rimming the edge of the schoolbag) to find the common denominator between you and your customer.

Here are these top three:

3: You put yourself in your customer’s shoes and try to imagine what the customer would need and appreciate.

This is relatively simple for writers, because most of the successful writers (both in fiction and nonfiction) write what they want to read. In other cases, this might be a bit more challenging. You might have been a student many years ago, but the requirements by a student from a teacher (or from an e-learning program) are completely different today than ten, twenty or more years ago when you were a student.

But whatever the branch, this method gives a very subjective result, because it is based on your past experiences and on what you already know.

2: You research.

It can be on the Internet, from newspapers, books, or it can be through interviewing those who experienced in the same area. For example you might ask other parents with girls, what they did when they had to buy schoolbags for their children.

You might trust some sources more than other. And remember, the result is again very subjective. And still only from your, producer’s/seller’s, perspective.

1: You talk to your customer.

There is no other way to make the best decisions and set up rules applicable for both sides, than communication.

I wonder how little attention is often paid to communication. Maybe because we are afraid that the customer will say, “I don’t want to talk to you anymore, because you don’t have what I need.” Or as in example with the girls, we are afraid they will shout in our faces, “I hate you!” So, we talk and talk and talk, and claim that we know what is needed. Based on the limited means we have. And we are often afraid to look out for new possibilities.

I don’t intend to say that you have to make everything the customer wants. You would not buy a thousand dollar schoolbag for your daughter, if she wanted one, and you having three thousand dollars as your monthly salary.

But you can find the perfect solution for you and your daughter, for you and your customer, by truly listening and showing understanding for the customer needs. You even might end up with your day brightened, because you will have a nice chat with your daughter or your customer, and I am sure you will learn something new.

When I worked with German Defence (Bundeswehr) at the department responsible for consolidation of the Bundeswehr requirements in respect to technical publications, I have accompanied a lieutenant colonel from the training corps in the German Army to view a new truck, produced to be used in Afghanistan for different purposes, ranging from transportation, as a radio station, to a vehicle sheltering a small combat unit.

This seasoned soldier, but still in the best shape I have ever seen someone in his age, or in my age for that matter, took place behind the wheel of the truck.

And immediately he exclaimed. “No, no! This won’t work. No. No.”

The head of the project, at the producing company side, looked a bit concerned and asked what was the problem.

The lieutenant colonel took a few seconds to scan inside of the cabin, then jumped out of the truck and joined the rest of us at the vehicle’s side. “Well,” he said. “The ceiling is much too low. Imagine a soldier in Afghanistan driving this truck on a bumpy road. All roads there are bumpy. He’ll be hitting his head constantly on that ceiling.”

We all gushed in recognition and surprise how we hadn’t seen it ourselves.

The lieutenant colonel shrugged. “You couldn’t have known it. Because you never were in Afghanistan on a bumpy road. Or in a truck on a bumpy road.” He turned to the head of the project team and said, “And I would’ve never be able to design or build such a truck, because I have never done it before.”

The lieutenant colonel turned to the engineer taking notes. “Is there a room to make the ceiling taller.”

The answer was, “Yes”. Then a number was given, which I don’t recall today.

After that the whole thing was settled and agreed.

What I am trying to tell with these true and memorable for me stories, is that you would never be able to find out such fine details on the customer requirements if you don’t have personal communication with your customer.

There is a brilliant commercial, in which an elderly gentleman shocks his daughter when he uses the tablet, she gave him for his birthday, as a kitchen chopping board for vegetables.

So, if you would like to avoid misunderstandings, unnecessary costs, and upsets on both sides, simply do all three of the top-tree I listed above. Maybe in this order: do the necessary research, talk to your customer and put yourself in your customer’s shoes, while truly listening.

Thus, the first step in defining your business rules is to compare what the customer wants and needs, and what you have to offer, and do it without judgment of either of the sides.

Next week, we will consider various types of decisions to be taken when agreeing on the product and/or service’s details.

Call for comments: Thank you for reading and considering this information! Do you agree or disagree with the above? And why? Your opinion will help to make this topic more understandable.

This post is a part of “Business rules: General”, copyright © 2015-2016 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels