Real World DMN: Who Models Decisions?
Blog: Lux Magi - Decision Management for Finance
One of the main motivations that James Taylor and I had for writing our book Real World Decision Modeling with DMN was sharing our experience of using decision modeling on many large projects and training engagements. One specific question that interested us was: “who uses Decision Modeling?”
So which specific project team members are most often tasked with building and maintaining a decision model (using DMN or any other notation)? We’d would be interested in your views and experiences. Let us know about your experience.
James already covered in another article why project teams build decision models, but who is generally tasked with creating and updating these documents?
In our experience this responsibility normally falls to (in descending order of likelihood):
- Business Analysts. The most common group of users, BAs are often tasked with producing precise and transparent representations of locally held and externally regulated business decisions. An increasing number prefer to use a standard notation, like DMN, rather than an ad-hoc one.
- Process Designers. Many process modelers see the benefit of decoupling the structure and logic of business decisions from business processes. many are drawn by the natural interface between BPMN and DMN.
- Senior Developers. To my surprise, many developers are drawn to the way in which decision models manage complexity and are keen to share the responsibility of maintaining a decision model especially when it exhibits direct traceability with existing implementation artifacts (i.e., business rules or code).
- Subject Matter Experts. SMEs use decision modeling less than I would hope. This seems to be because business experts are less comfortable or familiar with precise representations. They tend to view precision as a matter for implementors—a sentiment with which I heartily disagree.
- Data Architects/Scientists. Increasingly we observe this community using decision modeling, specifically the requirements level of DMN, to provide a context for analytical models.
- Business/Application Architects. Architects sometimes use decision modeling to define the interface of a collection of decision services, understand their stakeholder value and prioritize their implementation.
- Project Managers. This is a rarity admittedly, but I come across two PMs who have co-developed and promoted decision models as resources to train new team members and to facilitate independent review of decision services prior to committing development resources.
What is your experience? Who uses decision modeling in your company?
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