The following discussion takes things down to the next level of detail.

What is an activity?

Activities, especially in an STP context, can be defined as the implementation of a number of business rules. This is illustrated in the following figure:

What are business rules?

Business rules can be treated as analogous to bits of code or parts of an algorithm – the behaviour of the system in certain cases.

How do we choose the right business rules?

The challenge is to make the rules operable in a generic environment (this is after all one of our key business drivers – to make schedules generic and reusable as possible ). In the above figure, some rules will only apply in certain specific cases, but we want to make the activity definition as generic as possible.

Therefore rule sets have applicability in much the same as we found dependency earlier. In fact we can thus formulate an “applicability tree” to determine at what level to apply the rule set.

This is illustrated in the following figure where this Rule Set applies to UK Debts

 

© 2002-2005 Codel Services Ltd

This paper has been prepared by Codel Services Ltd to illustrate how structured business modelling can help your organisation. Codel Services Ltd is an IT Consultancy specialising in business modelling. If you would like further information, please contact us at: Deryck Brailsford, Codel Services Ltd, Dale Hill Cottage, Kirby-Le-Soken, Essex CO13 0EN,United Kingdom. Telephone: +44 (0)1255 862354/Mobile: + 44 (0)7710 435227/e-mail: info@codel-services.com