I remember how I as an employee used to look suspiciously when management of the organizations or companies, I used to work for, declared that they had to consider business processes and possibly reorganize them. I remember how I used to think, “But you need concrete actions, not just thinking!” With this, I meant that either new people needed to be employed to manage all the work we had to do or new tools purchased.

After having worked for thirteen years with S1000D and having among other helped meeting management decisions, and especially today being an owner of business, I learn more and more that being aware of the process flows inside a project or organization is vital. I also understand today, that a few simple but effective changes in business processes can save a lot of time and money. Considering and tweaking the ways how things occur in a company or organization can be immensely beneficial for all involved: customers, partners, employees, managers, and entrepreneurs.

Here is an article for Mekon‘s Bitesize on Business Rules, where I have explored this topic a bit more and where I quoted an excellent and illustrative resource explaining business processes. Above that, I show how business processes and business rules are connected.

Click here to find out more: Business Processes Are Not Just a Category of the S1000D Business Rules.

(Credits: Photograph © <librestock.com under the keyword “process”)

With over 500 Business Rules Decision Points to address, defining S1000D Business Rules can become overwhelming. And with usually tight deadlines, the whole process will become even more stressful.

In the fourth article in the Mekon‘s Bitesize series on Business Rules I share one of the biggest lessons I learned in frames of various S1000D implementation projects.

This lesson is an old and well-known wisdom but it is often forgotten because there is a general urge to get over with a task, especially the task of defining Business Rules. In general understanding, it is “just” a part of “just” planning technical publications, which are “only” an accessory to a larger product.

Fortunately, the latest tendency to treat and call the information produced in conformance with S1000D as technical data brings it to a new level, where it is treated as a product on its own.

Following the advice in this article has the ability to make the load of the large task of defining Business Rules much more manageable and even enjoyable.

Click here to go to the article.

(Credits: Photograph © librestock.com under keyword “things”)

(A note beforehand: This post is attributed to both Business Rules and S1000D blogs on this site, since the post and especially the article referenced in it, relate strongly to both topics in equal strength. This means that subscribers to both blogs will receive the notification on this post twice, once for each blog. I apologize in advance for this inconvenience.)

Recently, I was told that the Mekon‘s Bitesize series on Business Rules becomes quite popular, and was asked to send something new as soon as I could. However understandable this is — the topic of business rules is quite multidimensional and complex —, I was very pleasantly surprised.

At some point, I will probably write articles on concrete business rules decision points defined by S1000D and their aspects, but so far there are still many general topics to cover, in order to understand what business rules are and what they are not.

The third article in the series addresses the point in time when the business rules definition starts. It is much earlier than the actual project officially starts. It is definitely before a contract between cooperating and consuming parties is signed. In fact a number of the core decisions are recorded in those contracts. Understanding when the decision making starts can help to get it better under control.

Click here to go to the article.

(Credits: Photograph © librestock.com under keyword “time”)

(A note beforehand: This post is attributed to both Business Rules and S1000D blogs on this site, since the post and especially the article referenced in it, relate strongly to both topics in equal strength. This means that subscribers to both blogs will receive the notification on this post twice, once for each blog. I apologize in advance for this inconvenience.)

Discover of how and why business rules are vital to your success in this second article I have contributed to Mekon‘s Bitesize series on S1000D Business Rules.

This article is about what can go wrong if you are not in control of your business rules. It also underlines the importance to have a good understanding and overview of your business rules’ current status and its relation to the current state of your product or service.

Click here to go to the article.

Picture: like in music also in business rules you need to control all the “tones”.

(Photograph © librestock.com under key-phrase “to be in control”)

Recently, I self-published a book and I made a presentation. These two events, or rather the whole creative thinking connected to them brought me to this idea. To start a new category on my S1000D blog called “A Fiction Writer’s Musings on S1000D”.

It might appear strange, but if you have seen my presentation at this year’s S1000D User Forum in Seville you might be able to guess why.

A year or even a month ago, I might not have been sure myself what this is all about, but now I am convinced that this is a good idea.

The epiphany came when I exclaimed in a discussion in a break between the forum’s sessions in Seville, “Data modules are so much like scenes in a novel!” And after that I couldn’t stop the flow of realizations. “Just as scenes, data modules have a start (for a procedural data module it is preliminary requirements), an end (close-up requirements) and one setting (a unit or assembly). And in a way just like the scenes in a novel they tell a very short and self-contained story, or a future short story, that is how the given procedure is to take place.”

The previous statement during the presentation I made at the S1000D User Forum in Seville this year, claiming that technical manuals are books, whatever format they are in or however interactive they are, only strengthened this flow of parallels between books in general and S1000D conformant technical publications in particular.

After the User Forum I jotted down a list of topics I could think of when relating S1000D and its constructs to story-telling, and I came up with seven of them immediately.

Already at the User Forum and also after, during the training courses on S1000D, I started bringing up these parallels and the result was inspiring. Aha reactions and wide smiles of finally understanding a complicated topic. And I felt that after bringing such parallels forward, about the matter I love so much to those who start dealing with it and dread it (like I did twelve years ago), I felt that they began to like S1000D and the ideas behind it or at least started to look at it with curiosity.

So yes, this is the main reason and motivation behind this category: to take fear from such a substantial and multidimensional standard, and also to show its brilliance and again multidimensionality as well as also connect it to what we all already know and love, story-telling.

I wish both, you and me, an interesting, curious, fun and valuable journey on this yet unpaved ground.

Copyright © 2016 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels