Governing Operational Decisions in an Enterprise Scalable Way

Governing Operational Decisions in an Enterprise Scalable Way

by Pierre Berlandier, Eric Charpentier, Duncan Clark
Released April 2013
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: 9780738438030

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Book description

This IBM® Redbooks® publication presents decision governance topics from a theoretical discussion perspective and then goes on to make links to the practical aspects of applying these concepts by using the IBM Operational Decision Manager platform.

This book explores enterprise governance context to clarify the bigger picture for how governance is carried out across the enterprise.

You will also find this book valuable if you are using or considering the usage of an operational decision management system (or business rules management system (BRMS)) in your organization. You might be following a standard such as the The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) Architecture Development Method (ADM) and decided to use a decision management system that lets the business people take control of the business decisions that are made by the technology systems in their organization.

This book also describes Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT), which provides a comprehensive framework that assists enterprises in achieving their objectives for the governance and management of enterprise IT.

Another topic of great importance that this book covers is the relationship to ITIL, a public framework that describes best practices in IT Service Management. Of the five stages of the ITIL lifecycle, this book focuses on the objectives and processes of the Service Transition stage.

Table of contents

  1. Front cover
  2. Notices
    1. Trademarks
  3. Preface
    1. The team who wrote this book
    2. Now you can become a published author, too!
    3. Comments welcome
    4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
  4. Chapter 1. Introduction
    1. 1.1 Enterprise governance context
    2. 1.2 Operational decision management
    3. 1.3 Relationship to COBIT
    4. 1.4 Relationship to ITIL
    5. 1.5 Decision management technology
      1. 1.5.1 What is decision management
      2. 1.5.2 IBM Operational Decision Manager
    6. 1.6 What is decision governance
      1. 1.6.1 Governance and management
      2. 1.6.2 Decision governance
    7. 1.7 The evolution of concepts
      1. 1.7.1 From rules to decisions
      2. 1.7.2 Decision change management
      3. 1.7.3 About previous versions of IBM Operational Decision Manager
    8. 1.8 References
  5. Chapter 2. Sample scenario
    1. 2.1 Insurance organization background
    2. 2.2 The insurance solution
      1. 2.2.1 Website (self-service interface)
      2. 2.2.2 Call Center
      3. 2.2.3 Decision execution (Decision Server)
      4. 2.2.4 Decision management (Decision Center)
    3. 2.3 Change management scenarios
      1. 2.3.1 Personas and roles
      2. 2.3.2 Business change management scenario
      3. 2.3.3 Technical change management scenario
  6. Chapter 3. Roles and responsibilities in governing decisions
    1. 3.1 Governance roles
    2. 3.2 References
    3. 3.3 Organizational change
      1. 3.3.1 Planning for organizational change
      2. 3.3.2 The initial role of the Center of Excellence
      3. 3.3.3 Relationship to Business Process Management
  7. Chapter 4. Organizing decision management
    1. 4.1 Decision service structure
      1. 4.1.1 Role of rule projects
      2. 4.1.2 Business Object Model project
      3. 4.1.3 Context variables project
      4. 4.1.4 Functional rule projects
      5. 4.1.5 Signature project
      6. 4.1.6 Project organization examples
      7. 4.1.7 Role of rule packages and folders
      8. 4.1.8 Rule sets as exposed decision operations
      9. 4.1.9 RuleApps as units of deployment
    2. 4.2 Roles and permission management
      1. 4.2.1 User groups
      2. 4.2.2 Project security
      3. 4.2.3 Permissions
  8. Chapter 5. Release management
    1. 5.1 Overview
      1. 5.1.1 Decision services
      2. 5.1.2 Change management for releases
    2. 5.2 Managing decision change through releases
    3. 5.3 Business release change patterns
      1. 5.3.1 Compliance change
      2. 5.3.2 Decision improvement
      3. 5.3.3 Decision improvement that is based on key performance indicators
      4. 5.3.4 Decision evolution
      5. 5.3.5 Decision policy test fixes
    4. 5.4 Technical Release Change Patterns
      1. 5.4.1 Technical changes in the decision object model
      2. 5.4.2 Technical changes in the decision operation signature
    5. 5.5 Branching and merging to manage releases
      1. 5.5.1 Branching and merging
      2. 5.5.2 Good practices
      3. 5.5.3 Example of branching and merging in IBM Operational Decision Manager
    6. 5.6 Release identification and versioning
      1. 5.6.1 Release branching strategy
      2. 5.6.2 Standard releases
      3. 5.6.3 Test fix or emergency releases
      4. 5.6.4 Normal releases
      5. 5.6.5 Decision release runtime versioning strategy
    7. 5.7 Decision release lifecycle
      1. 5.7.1 Release goals
      2. 5.7.2 Activity representation
      3. 5.7.3 Release roles
      4. 5.7.4 Release lifecycle
  9. Chapter 6. Release activities
    1. 6.1 Overview
      1. 6.1.1 Activity classification
      2. 6.1.2 Activity realization
    2. 6.2 Change activities
      1. 6.2.1 Change activity classification
      2. 6.2.2 Change Activity Lifecycle Overview
      3. 6.2.3 Granularity of a change activity
      4. 6.2.4 Change activities in IBM Operational Decision Manager
    3. 6.3 Validation activities
      1. 6.3.1 Peer review
      2. 6.3.2 User Acceptance Testing
      3. 6.3.3 Smart query-based analysis
      4. 6.3.4 Concept: Champion-Challenger
      5. 6.3.5 Simulation and historic simulation
      6. 6.3.6 Champion-Challenger in production
      7. 6.3.7 Audit
      8. 6.3.8 Configuration management
      9. 6.3.9 Unit test
      10. 6.3.10 Test suite
      11. 6.3.11 System integration tests
      12. 6.3.12 Rule analysis
      13. 6.3.13 Validation process
      14. 6.3.14 References
  10. Chapter 7. Deployment
    1. 7.1 Choosing the source of truth for the rules
    2. 7.2 Deploying the Decision Center component
    3. 7.3 Deploying and promoting RuleApps
  11. Chapter 8. Processes
    1. 8.1 Business test fix process
    2. 8.2 Pure Business change process
    3. 8.3 Business with IT change process
    4. 8.4 Technical change process
    5. 8.5 Supporting validation processes
  12. Chapter 9. Realization of the insurance scenario
    1. 9.1 Overview
    2. 9.2 Decision service project organization
      1. 9.2.1 Definition of decision service structure in Rule Designer
      2. 9.2.2 Navigating the decision service structure in Decision Center
    3. 9.3 Defining roles responsibilities and permissions
      1. 9.3.1 Project permissions
      2. 9.3.2 Defining role-based action permissions
      3. 9.3.3 Group level action permissions
    4. 9.4 Pure Business Change process example
      1. 9.4.1 Release definition
      2. 9.4.2 Defining release goals
      3. 9.4.3 Templated rule changes
      4. 9.4.4 Business Console rule modification
      5. 9.4.5 Simulation
      6. 9.4.6 Activity closure and testing
      7. 9.4.7 Release baselining and deployment
    5. 9.5 Technical Change Process example
      1. 9.5.1 Technical release definition
      2. 9.5.2 Execution Object Model change activity
      3. 9.5.3 Ruleset Signature change activity
      4. 9.5.4 Rule refactoring and synchronization
  13. Chapter 10. Conclusion
    1. 10.1 Governance of decision change management
    2. 10.2 Where do you go from here
  14. Appendix A. Acronyms
  15. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks
    2. Other publications
    3. Online resources
    4. Help from IBM
  16. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: Governing Operational Decisions in an Enterprise Scalable Way
  • Author(s): Pierre Berlandier, Eric Charpentier, Duncan Clark
  • Release date: April 2013
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: 9780738438030