BMM11 — Section: 7, 8, 9

In response to some SBVR FTF issues, changes have been made to SBVR that affect business rule (adopted from SBVR by BMM) and business policy (adopted from BMM by SBVR). A minor update of BMM is needed to keep it consistent with SBVR Summary of relevant SBVR changes: The resolution of SBVR Issue 9477 caused the verb concept (unary fact type) 'directive is actionable' to be replaced by two verb concepts with narrower definitions: • 'element of guidance is practicable': this is concerned with ensuring that business rules are sufficiently well-defined and precise that they can be put directly into practice. • 'element of governance is directly enforceable': this is concerned with ensuring that violations of operative business rules can be detected and corrected. This separation of concerns is relevant to BMM. If desired results for an enterprise are not being achieved, there could be two causes related to business rules: 1 The enterprise does not have the right business rules. 2 The enterprise and, particularly, the people in the enterprise are not applying the rules correctly. Before challenging whether the business rules are the right ones, it would be important to establish that the rules were being applied as they were intended to be. To establish this, the rules must be enforceable. A resolution of this issue has been drafted, and will be distributed to the BMM FTF when the relevant SBVR changes have been finalized

The resolution is:
· To align BMM definitions of 'directive' and 'business rule' with corresponding definitions in SBVR, using "practicable" and "directly enforceable" instead of "actionable".
· Not to adopt additional structure from SBVR into BMM, but to add some explanatory notes.
The rationale is that 'business rule' in BMM is a placeholder (like 'business process' and 'organization unit'). In an enterprise's BMM an instance of 'business rule' would be a reference to a business rule that is defined in a model of the operational business.
In an integrated set of OMG business models, the operational model for business rules would be SBVR-based. Business rules would be connected to the fact types they are based on, the representations owned by speech communities, etc.
But businesses can use BMM without having to use SBVR. Operational models do not have to be SBVR-based. This "loose coupling" is one of BMM's strengths, and it can be adequately supported by a 'business rule' placeholder. It does not need additional concepts (see discussion below), such as 'element of governance', 'operative business rule' and 'structural business rule' to be adopted into BMM from SBVR.