What is a business rules analyst? Is it really a new role?

The term business analyst is not new. How is this new role of the business rules analyst different from the role of a business analyst? A business analyst is responsible for analyzing the business needs of their clients to help identify business problems and propose solutions. A business rules analyst, however, can be thought of as a business analyst with a focus on business rules. The role's primary objective is to focus on separating rules from code.

You do not need a special degree or qualification to become a business rules analyst, but you should have experience as a business analyst. Analytical skills are important for a business rules analyst to discover, capture, and express business rules in simple English that is easily understandable by business peers as well as the IT people who are going to design the business application. It is also useful for a business rules analyst to have an understanding of object-oriented programming concepts. A business rules analyst doesn't necessarily need to have working experience as a software developer, but that experience certainly helps them appreciate and implement the reusability aspect of software development.

The skills needed for this new role are very similar to that of a general business analyst, but the focus and day-to-day responsibilities are quite different. For example, it would be the business analyst who facilitates sessions to capture business rules for a new business application, whereas the business rules analyst
would ensure that the extracted rules reflect the business intent and will result in the desired business behavior. The business rules analyst also uses these sessions to understand how rules are enforced, how they are going to change, and how rule-related issues such as conflicting rules would be resolved.

The previous figure shows the role each expert plays in the rules application development cycle. There are four steps involved, as explained next.

1. Define the business application Based on real market need, business owners decide to introduce a new product. The key players in this step are business owners and business analysts. After an in-depth feasibility study and quantitative analysis, they define the requirements for the new application. The majority of work at this step is done by the business analysts.

2. Discover rules The requirements then come to the business rules analyst, who goes through the documents and extracts business rules from these requirements. The business rules analyst comes up with a list of rules in the form of structured natural-language statements that clearly, completely, and concisely express the rules to be implemented in the application. The business rules analyst must use his or her knowledge of process modeling and fact modeling to discover these rules. This step also involves validating the rules and developing scenarios for testing.

3. Create a framework for writing rules In this application design and development step, the business rules analyst works very closely with rules architects and rules developers to help them design the application in a way that ensures that the rules reflect the business intent and that the application will result in the desired business behavior. The key players here are business rules analysts, rules architects, and rules developers. The architects design the framework for business rules analysts to write the rules in a simple, English-like language. This is the most important step, because the business rules analyst has to make sure there is no redundancy in the rules while also helping the rules architects make components that will be reusable in other similar applications. The business rules analyst also structures the rules properly based on a logical model and works with the rules architect to help design the application in the BRM system. The rules architect along with expert developers then create a rules application, known at this stage as rules templates. Rules templates are guiding models that business rules analysts use to create the actual rules.

4. Create and manage rules The final step is to create or add the rules to the application. The business rules analyst uses a simple Web-based user interface to create rules for the first time. The business rules analyst uses the same interface to manage rules in the future. You might have noticed that the business analysts primarily interact with the management and business owners, whereas the business rules analysts must talk to all levels involved in developing the actual solution that the business rules are part of.

After the rules are created and tested, they are deployed and interfaced with other logical components of a system. A good business rules analyst elicits the invaluable knowledge from the business experts, digitizes it, and helps manage it in the most efficient manner possible.