Similar to this month’s writing news, also the business site of my venture was very busy since mid December.

For the business part there are two projects, which I have been pursuing in December and now in January: Resources on generic Business Rules overview and S1000D Business Rules step-by-step guide.

The generic Business Rules resource has been completed and I will start preparing it soon for publication. This means that I will self-edit it (a couple of times), send it for reading to friends and colleagues, who also deal in their life with business rules and maybe also someone who doesn’t know about business rules but would like to.

A call-out here to you, who is new to business rules but you are whether also a business owner or responsible for a project or product in your organization and need an overview of a product life-cycle and also of business processes around it. Then you might be interested to beta-read my Business Rules book. Beta-reading means that you would read an early copy of it and provide comments for its improvements. What’s in it for you? You’ll learn a lot, of both what is there, but also by analyzing the content in the book you will gain practical skills on business rules definitions, since their definition is nothing else but analysis, structuring and content generation, all mixed up together. And there is a little something extra. I usually send a signed paperback copy of my book as a thank you gift to my beta-readers and all other who actively participate in shaping my books. So take a look at the resource here, and if its content appeals to you and you would like to participate in beta-reading of this book, then contact me at vib@optimistwriter.com.

Due to the generic Business Rules overview being finished now in its first draft, I will focus the generation of business content on the S1000D business rules step-by-step guide. Since the  last newsletter it has been already reworked twice. One change was in respect to the numbering of the links with the specification for separate BRDPs. They are not sequential anymore but show which place in the chain the given BRDP occupies. And the second change is that I started structuring the S1000D Business Rules step-by-step guide in a similar way how I structured the generic Business Rules guide. This is also a great test for the second one in action.

A lot is happening right now in publishing, teaching and marketing parts of my business, so I will reduce the frequency of blog posting again to once a week for each category: one post on writing and one post on business topics.

Before I finish, I would like to mention another resource I am planning for the nearest future. It will be a short white paper or rather a short e-book on project dis-entanglement. More precisely, a collection of questions and tips, which by answering and applying will help you to find solutions for your stagnating projects. I will offer this resource for free download on my web-site. And as subscribers to this site you will be the ones of the very first to find out about this and to receive a copy of it.

I wish you success in your endeavours and look forward to further interact with you here, through the coaching services I offer, or other ways of collaboration and communication.

I must admit that I procrastinated writing this article for almost two days. This post is the last one in the project.

There is something daunting about finishing a project. And finishing business rules definition is not different. It might appear even more daunting because the actual production and the service launch is about start. So you will have an end and a beginning at the same time.

By now you have planned your product or service by defining business rules from its scope, its design to the termination and eventual discarding.

There might have been a decision or two, and probably many more, which you could not define immediately and left to decide upon later. You might have forgotten about them. This can and does happen for all products and services. Since you simply can’t take everything in account at once, but also because some decisions need longer time to happen than the others. Some of these can be for example deciding and acquiring copyright or patents. I consider these as part of the business rules definition and not production, because they have to be in place before production.

The first and foremost what you have to do at this final stage of business rules definition, is jotting down and agreeing upon criteria when the “Execute” button can be pressed. You need to decide on the minimum must-have decisions in place, so that you can start the production process or roll-out your service.

The next step here is to see what decisions you already have taken from M to T in “Manipulate”, from Management to Termination.

• Did you define the scope of your product?
• Did you compare the customer requirements with what you initially had in your company, which could be utilized for your product or service?
• Did you define the team inside and outside your company (including the representatives of the customer side)?
• Do you know what needs to be acquired for the production/roll-out process to start? Did you already purchase a part of it? Can the rest be acquired after the pressing “Execute” button?
• Did you plan the structure and access points to your product service?
• Did you define the steps to be taken for the production start and service roll-out?
• Did you plan the routine fabrication/creation and quality assurance, as well as trouble-shooting steps for your product service?
• Did you clearly explain to all involved how the product/service must be used (customers, operators, maintainers, etc.)?
• Did you clarify all the legal matters for your product or service? Does it and its production, use, and other processes follow corresponding laws and regulations? Did you get the necessary copyrights, patents, allowances and qualifications to start the process?
• Did you legalize the business rules? My guess would be that at this stage this can not have happened yet, since you are reviewing them now. So the stamp needs to wait and will be put right before you press the “Execute” button.
• Did you define all the necessary look and feel rules for your product? Do you know how exactly it will look like? Or are you still waiting for the corresponding definitions from your subcontractor. The best here would be to get some test samples or already some of the equipment for the service available and installed, so that you can test it.
• Did you decide on the criteria dictating when to terminate/give up/replace your product or service? What do you have to communicate to the customer in this case? Do you have to let the customer know this already when you launch your product/service? The latter is quite a common practice with software and web-applications’ use agreements, which a customer has to consent to. They all have definitions of conditions for the regular and irregular contract termination.

How do all the above play together? Do you have to adjust one or another or all so that they fit? By now you have probably already made numerous adjustments at each of the steps as you went from one business rules type to another. But you need to review them again at the end of the business rules definition and you just did so.

So whenever you are ready press the button “Execute” or cut the ribbon and enjoy the ride.

And don’t forget to update the business rules along your production/service journey. Keep the checklists — which your business rules in fact are — up-to-date, then you will truly be able to enjoy and overview the process.

P.S. This was the final post for the Business Rules: General resource. The next steps for me here are self-edits and revision, beta-reading, professional edit and publication of the book. I will let you know as soon as the book is published. Your comments during this revision process will be highly appreciated since they will help me to improve the content in this book.

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

This business rules type is often forgotten or ignored. Not many want to think about terminating their product or service, hoping it will be there forever.

But it won’t. At least not in its first version. And your updates might be so crucial that you in fact will have something completely new than merely an updated product or service.

I can guarantee that at some point earlier or later you will need to discard one or more of your products or services.

What do you have to know then?

Again, the answer becomes clearer as soon as you put your customers’ interests in focus of your attention.

The following questions appear if you do this.

How will the termination of or change in your product or service affect your customers? Will they receive a new product from you instead, or do they have to go to one of your competitors? Or are you going to convince them that they don’t need that product at all? That they have that functionality with some other of your products, which they purchased as well? Will they need to invest something to use your new product? Will they receive more from the change? Will they have to change the links, addresses, data in their address- and data-bases because of the change you cause? Etc., etc.

Naturally you have to choose those methods, which will benefit your customers and will not cause any inconveniences to them. Sometimes it is not possible to avoid inconveniences. Then you need to provide as many benefits as possible, which will motivate your customers to stick with you during the change.

There will be rules and regulations on what you have to do or not do while terminating a product or service.

You can consider your product/service termination as an extraordinary termination of a contract. This is true even if you don’t have an active purchase order at the time when you want to stop your product line or service, especially if you did it over a longer period of time. Then you still terminate a contract, an unwritten one, but you do break a commitment. The one promising to your current and potential customers that you would continue maintaining your product/services for years. Even if you never made this promise in written or spoken way, your customers expect consistency and reliability. With the termination or change of your product or service you make a cut into the expected consistency.

You will know from various contract agreements that there are special rules on how to dissolve a contract, how long the notification time before termination should be, what kind of explanations can be expected and which must be given, etc. These rules are what you need to define about stopping or major change in your product/service here.

So ultimately you need to create a checklist of things you already know you have to do when discarding your product or service. It is easier to create such a list from a distance of time than when you are pressed with deadlines to do all at once.

And then there is one more challenge here. Some companies wait too long until they change or discard their product or service. They loose time and money by maintaining a dead stone. Thus, now as you are in the planning phase, create a list of criteria, which will help you identify the signs when your product need to be changed or discarded. The main indicator of course the diminishing interests by the potential and in the worse case also by current customers. So research, ask your colleagues and competitors, which are these criteria for them. And then draft such a list for your products, services and business in general.

As a conclusion to all the above we can say that you need to prepare the termination procedures as carefully as (or maybe even more thoroughly than) the implementation and production processes.

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