Document & Business Rule Analysis

Document analysis is a means to elicit requirements by studying available documentation on existing and comparable solutions and identifying relevant information.  Business Rule Analysis analyzes the rules that govern decisions in an organization and that define, constrain, or enable organizational operations.  Both of these analysis techniques help the project manager and business analyst identify the needs of the client, as well as the requirements and expectations for the project implementation. 

Document analysis is used if the objective is to gather details of existing solutions, including business rules, entities, and attributes that need to be included in a new solution or need to be updated for the current solution. This technique also applies in situations where the subject matter experts for the existing solutions are no longer with the organization, or are not going to be available throughout the duration of the elicitation process.

Business rules analysis is a subset of document analysis and can be development in two distinct forms:

1. Operative rules are rules that the organization chooses to enforce as a matter of policy. They are intended to guide the actions of people working within the organization.  An example...An order must not be placed when the billing address provided by the customer does not match the address on file with the credit card provider.
2. Structural rules are intended to help determine when something is or is not true, or when things fall into a specific category. They are expressed as rules because they describe categorizations that may change over time.  An example...An order must have one and only one associated payment method.

The impact of changes to business rules resulting from projects can be assessed more easily when they are documented separately from the processes they detail or the means used to enforce the rules.  It is also important to question existing business rules for continuing relevance to current and projected modes of organizational operations and structure after a project implementation.  The same can be said for all other supporting system documentation.