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Reader Questions

A reader asks about decision services with multiple answers

September 28, 2009

One of the questions I get regularly can be summarized like this: I see how a decision service works when it returns an answer but can it return multiple answers? As one reader put it:
Suppose we want to go from India to the USA. There are number of alternatives and many flights that are available. [...]

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A reader asks about champion/challenger testing

May 27, 2009

A little while ago I got an interesting question from a reader about champion/challenger testing  – an element of adaptive control. Check out this brief on Adaptive Control or read the chapter in Smart (Enough) Systems for details on the approach. Anyway, here’s the question:
When testing a champion strategy with challengers, I assume sample [...]

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A reader asks – how to document decision logic

April 9, 2009

I got an interesting question last week:
In you experience do you believe that the rules editors will become self documenting tools and, if so, is there any danger to this?
With regard to products I have used in the past I am not convinced they have evolved sufficiently to do this and I always see users [...]

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Decisions matter to Complex Event Processing

September 5, 2008

An old colleague asked me to explain a little about the difference between Complex Event Processing or CEP and decision management. In particular he referenced a recent series of articles by James Kobelius in which the last one (titled Really Happy in Real Time) discussed how “Complex event processing empowers the contact center to manage [...]

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A reader asks – what makes a company ready (for EDM)?

August 27, 2008

A reader had an interesting question this week. As a comment to Using decision management to deliver intelligent business performance he asked “What makes a company ready?”. I suspect my closing line “The products are, mostly, ready. Whether companies are is another question…” prompted this.
So, what makes a company ready for enterprise decision management – [...]

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Using decision management for Governance, Risk and Compliance

August 20, 2008

A reader asked me to blog about GRC – governance, risk and compliance – this week and, in particular, the difference between IT governance and true business governance or what is broadly known as GRC. I have been thinking about this and will write some more posts when I get back from vacation but, for [...]

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A reader asks about scorecards and why people use them

August 12, 2008

A reader sent me an interesting question after watching the ILOG seminar on scorecards and rules in which I participated earlier this week (recording of this rules and scorecards seminar is available). Here’s a summary of what he said:
One immediate comment I would have is that scorecarding seems to insert an extra unnecessary step. Rather [...]

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A reader asks… about development, business rules and model-driven development

August 4, 2008

I got an interesting series of questions from a reader that seemed to me to justify a longish post. The initial question was quite harmless looking:
Can you give a clue as to what software engineering approach you use/recommend for EDM, but especially business rules that non-IT staff can alter safely?
But the whole thing got more [...]

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The empire has less staff

July 29, 2008

Frank posted some great comments on Here’s how to get started with decision management the other day and made me think about this, often very severe, problem. As Frank put it:
How do you overcome the moral fear some organizations have when they realize 40-80 percent performance improvements come at 40-60 percent less personnel; so if [...]

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Enterprise Decision Management and the Software Development Lifecycle

July 14, 2008

One of my regular readers had a question today about Enterprise Decision Management and the Software Development Lifecycle – the EDMSDLC if you like. Here’s what he asked:
We do Business Rules in our approach… I guess one question would be, where does EDM fit in a typical SDLC? [company] does Requirements, we have a method [...]

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Should Enterprise Decision Management only cover automation?

July 11, 2008

The same reader who asked yesterday’s question had a second:
Do you see the terms “Enterprise Decision Management” and “Smart Enough Systems” concerned mostly with the automation of decisions — which means really only covering strictly operational and appropriate tactical decisions.
The term “Enterprise Decision Management” to me suggests a broader definition, one that I would expect [...]

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What’s the difference between Enterprise Decision Management and Corporate Performance Management?

July 10, 2008

I really like getting and answering questions and a reader of the book asked me a good one today
What do you see as the difference between Enterprise Decision Management and Corporate Performance Management? I don’t see you really using them interchangeably, but I sense that you see them as more or less the same thing [...]

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After EDM – the future of business

April 11, 2008

The second part of my response to Dave Wright’s comment is about the kind of business one can run after one adopts EDM. To do this, let’s predicate the discussion a company that has adopted Enterprise Decision Management as a core management principle, implemented the technology and development approaches that support it and had long [...]

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After EDM – some thoughts on technology

April 10, 2008

Some time ago a regular reader, Dave Wright, left a   comment on a blog post I wrote as a guest. In it he asked “What comes after EDM?”. This, of course, is both an interesting and a difficult question. Thinking about it I decided to split it into two parts – one about technologies [...]

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Using EDM to thrive in a recession

February 4, 2008

This week’s editorial calendar is about using Enterprise Decision Management – EDM – to survive and thrive in a recession. Prompted by a comment from Nathan Jones, the topic seems appropriate as everyone flails around trying to decide if they should use the “r” word or not. Clearly, whether we meet the definition of [...]

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Enterprise Metadata for a curious reader

December 17, 2007

Mike replied to my post about his question on enterprise metadata. He, like me, prefers David Marco’s definition of metadata as “all physical data and knowledge from inside and outside an organization, including information about the physical data, technical and business processes, rules and constraints of the data, and structures of the data used by [...]

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A curious reader asks…about enterprise metadata

December 11, 2007

Mike Kavis, a blogger on ITToolbox and Chief Architect, sent me an interesting question about enterprise metadata
He says “My company has huge amounts of historical data. We load 500M new rows a day and keep data for 116 weeks. I am trying to move this company away from being report writers to being [...]

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A curious reader asks…

December 7, 2007

One of my favorite things to do on my blog is respond to questions from readers. To make it easy to find these going forward I have added a new category – Reader Questions. Email me (james at smartenoughsystems.com) if you have a question you’d like me to answer on the blog. Anyway, this week [...]

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