Roles and activities

Each step of the rule development lifecycle requires specific skills that are held by different users. The roles of the users must be assigned at the outset of a project.

Decision Server Rules and Decision Center

Together, Decision Server Rules and Decision Center provide a comprehensive decision management environment. The following figure shows the various development roles and their places in the management environment.

The roles can be broken down into two categories:

IT users: The architects, developers, and administrators who develop and maintain the rule application.
Business users: The business analysts, policy managers, and rule authors who develop and maintain the decision logic.

The following table lists the different types of IT and business users.

Table 1. User roles for the development of business rule applications
Role	Activities	Description
	Design Integrate Deploy	Architects work mainly in Decision Server to do the following tasks: Define the decision services and their interface with the calling applications. Define the project organization for the developers and business users. For example, they set up the data model for the rule vocabulary. Optimize rule execution.
	Design Author Test Integrate Deploy	Developers know the object models, APIs, and the development environment. They work mainly in Decision Server to do the following tasks: Develop, test, debug, and deploy decision services. They contribute to the design of the rules. Define the client execution code to integrate decision services in to business applications.
	Design Author Test Synchronize Manage Validate	Business analysts work with business and IT departments, from design to integration of a software application. They work in Decision Server and Decision Center to do the following tasks: Design a formal specification for the rules, with validation from both developers and policy managers. Define the vocabulary for the rules. Identify candidate business rules. Write and organize business rules so that rule authors can maintain them. Validate rules to make sure they produce the expected results. Business analysts can share tasks with developers, but typically they do not write code.
	Manage Validate Author	Policy managers own the decisions within an organization. They work mainly in Decision Center to do the following tasks: Participate in the design of a formal specification for the rules. Define vocabulary elements with the help of business analysts. Manage releases and validation activities in the context of decision governance. Create and update rules. Review how the running of rules is orchestrated. Report on the status of the decisions. Test rules to ensure that they provide the intended business outcome. Run simulations to assess the potential impact of changes to rules.
	Author	Rule authors work in Decision Center to do the following tasks: Update and sometimes create rules. Review business rules. Create change activities in the context of decision governance.