Along with a bunch of friends and colleagues, I have spent the last few years working on DecisionAutomation.org – a multi-vendor organization dedicated to documenting decision automation best practices. A key focus of this organization has been on how best to use decision modeling with the Decision Model and Notation standard. This matters because OMG, the organization that runs the standard, explicitly forbids “methodology” in its standards – you can’t standardize how to do things, only the result. This means there are elements of DMN that are rarely a good idea, but the standard can’t tell you when they are – as long as there is SOME reason to use them, the standard needs to define them.
To help organizations adopt DMN effectively and maximize their value, DAO identified multiple ways they might want to use DMN. Each of these uses different pieces of the standard and needs different kinds of software support. To make it easy to identify what will work for you, we built a great tool we call the Interactive Usage Scenario tool. This lets you identify what you are trying to achieve and see which elements of DMN and which software features in a DMN tool will help you be successful.
The tool has you pick a business path such as transformation through technology, people development or focusing on a specific target use case – and then pick one of the core scenarios for decision modeling – anything from a simple decision inventory to detailed decision definitions to deployable decision services. Based on these, it identifies DMN and tool capabilities you will need across decision requirements diagrams, model support, decision logic and KPIs, interpretability, implementation and terminology management. It will show you what’s needed, what’s helpful and what’s optional.
You can watch an introductory video here
Check out the Interactive Usage Scenario tool, see who’s participating and sign up at Decision Automation.Org
