Ajilon’s resident Data Management and Business Rules expert, Graham Witt, was recently invited to present at the 12th International Business Rules Forum in Las Vegas this month.

Graham presented his paper, Developing Natural Language Business Rule Statements - A Practical Method.

“During my presentation, I described a practical method of developing rule statements that are in natural language - thus able to verified by stakeholders - and unambiguous - thus able to be implemented consistently within the organisation and the parties with which it deals,” said Graham.

“I actually developed this method for NSW Land and Property Management Authority (LPMA), which selected the Business Rules Approach and the Object Management Group’s Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) as representative of best rules practice.”

Graham said the method involves two components:

   1. A detailed taxonomy of rules
   2. The use of templates and sub templates to generate well-formed rule statements

A number of industry thought leaders in the field attended Graham’s presentation, which generated some interesting discussion.

“While there, I also attended a user group meeting for the RuleXpress product, which LPMA are using to manage business rules, and was able to convey LPMA’s enhancement requirements directly to the product architect.”

Graham is seasoned public speaker and is regularly invited to present at industry conferences, in addition to having his work published in industry publications and trade journals.