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

The last blog post I published this week (before this one here) was about making products and services attractive and how to attract customers to them, or in other words how to market them.

I have also mentioned that I am a avid beginner in marketing for a self-standing business.

So, today I start a challenge to create a habit of taking action everyday to improve and to market the products and services I offer, the core of which are my knowledge and the resulting content, as both steadily grow.

I learn from many great resources about marketing for an online business. One of these is the workbook “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” by Darren Rowse (ProBlogger.net).

For the first day of the challenge to build a better blog Darren suggests to create an elevator pitch for the blog. I found this very intriguing, because this will allow me to be more clear about what I want to serve my customers with, and also help them understand what I am up to and what I can help them with. So I decided to create an elevator pitch not only for my blog but for my business in general. And I decided to do both (as Darren suggested): to create an elevator pitch and to write a blog post about it.

So here goes the elevator pitch for the Optimist Writer.

In front of the elevator:

Optimist Writer is about project dis-entanglement and cheerleading for businesses, writers and S1000D lovers.

When elevator pitch goes to floors 1 to 5:

Optimist Writer is an independent writing and consulting company. It is devoted to project dis-entanglement and cheerleading for businesses, writers and S1000D lovers. Giving back to the communities that nurture me, I offer content and services to businesses, writers and S1000D-implementers, and help them discover an array of perfect solutions to each of their challenges.

If the travel with an elevator goes above floor 5, I add the following:

The content is offered both on-line and in form of books, and the services are both in form of training courses and consultancy using written exchange methods. The techniques presented in the content are implemented and tested in my function as a writer and business owner. Books (fiction and nonfiction), resulting from these experiences and lessons learned, are also accessible from this site.

If you want to find out more, then do one, or better all, of the following:

• Explore the content on this site offered on various pages
• Subscribe to my blogs and news
• Contact me at vib@optimistwriter.com to arrange a meeting or an interview with me and discuss possibilities for our collaboration.