Decision Modeling Essentials

  • Course Length:
    2 days
  • PDUs:
    Earn 14 IIBA CDUs and PMI PDUs
  • Public Pricing:
    $1595
  • Onsite Pricing:
    We offer discount pricing for onsite groups. Please contact us to discuss your specific course requirements, group size, and available training dates.

The Decision Model provides an efficient new method of eliciting, organizing, managing and testing business rules and logic. It brings to the world of business rules and logic a well-defined structure with the rigor of integrity and normalization principles. The model supports business rule analysis and decision analysis techniques as defined in the BABOK®. It is similar in concept to what the relational model brings to the world of data and it provides business analysts with a new way to succeed by ensuring that critical business rules are not missed. The Decision Model provides for unambiguous creation and sustainable maintenance of business logic, often with minimal IT intervention.

This course introduces business analysts to The Decision Model and provides a practical step- by-step approach for creating them as a new standard business analysis deliverable. It is based on the book, The Decision Model: A Business Logic Framework Linking Business and Technology by Barbara von Halle and Larry Goldberg (Taylor & Francis, LLC, 2009).

This course provides ways to improve and simplify business process models as well as an approach to decomposing business policies, rules, and related statements into reusable pieces of business logic. This model is also an important artifact for improving data quality and supports compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley.

The first day of the course covers concepts and principles with reinforcing exercises. It continues to the second day with an in-depth case study where attendees work to apply decision modeling techniques to a realistic, sophisticated business situation. Exercises and workshops can be done with paper and pencil. Students will have access to downloadable decision modeling templates for use after class.

 

At the completion of this course, attendees will be able to:

  • Create The Decision Model which provides a simplistic business friendly view of complex business rules
  • Understand when and how to utilize The Decision Model
  • Show how The Decision Model simplifies Business Processes Models
  • Prioritize business decisions based on business impact
  • Explain to business and technical audiences the benefits and concepts of The Decision Model as a new kind of deliverable
  • Discuss the important differences between The Decision Model and previous techniques
  • Build skeletal and detailed decision models
  • Conduct validation of decision models against integrity principles
  • Encourage business creativity in discovering optimum decision model content
  • Conduct decision modeling sessions in an iterative fashion

Intended Audience

This course is designed for business analysts, business stakeholders, business stewards, project managers, system and enterprise architects involved with elicitation, management, and/or automation of business rules and logic.

Prerequisites

Students should understand the concepts of workflow modeling.

Introduction

  • Learn the value of using the Decision Model
  • Understand its benefits for an organization
  • Learn how Decision Models simplify process models

1.5 hours

Decision Model Concepts

  • Learn various approaches to defining a decision model
  • Practice decomposing decisions into their simplest form
  • Learn a standardized format for representing rules and decisions
  • Recognize and document rule patterns
  • Identify gaps and inconsistencies in rules
  • Learn a structured technique for defining key terms
  • Establish relationships between rule sets to promote logic reuse
  • Learn decision model principles which guarantee uniformity, integrity, and technology independence
  • Exercise: Create a basic Decision Model

5.5 hours

Utilize a 10 Step Approach to Create a Decision Model

Workshop: Complex real-world case study
  • Identify the business need for analyzing and documenting a business decision
  • Build skeletal Decision Model structure
  • Explore possible decision conditions
  • Add supporting decision structures
  • Solidify the glossary of fact types
  • Iteratively detail and structure the Decision Model
  • Learn approval process

6 hours

Course Summary

  • Learn to integrate the Decision Model with other business analysis deliverables
  • Discuss on-the-job application of course concepts
  • Develop an Action Plan with next steps to be applied on the student's current project

1 hour

Decision Modeling Essentials
Course Length: 2 days
$1595

Sep 19 – Sep 20, 2013

Atlanta, GARegister