What is the simplest way to model business rules in ARIS? ARIS Rules Designer is a nice tool but when there is a need just to quickly document the rules there should be a simpler and cheaper way. If an output is dependant on a simple choice as an input, using even the standard Rule Diagram is too much of an effort. Ideas? For example, has anybody used matrices for such a purpose?
Thank you but I was really looking for something in between. For example I find Event Diagram quite handy for some rule modeling. Now I'll try to configure SmartDesign for EventDiagram to see if that can do.
No doubt that Business Rules Designer is right way to go when rules are many and/or complex and/or there are rigorous requirements so testing is required at design stage.
Julia Wagner on
You are right, that modelling a decision with ARIS Business Rules Designer has the most impact when the decision is complex. For quiet simple decisions like "if value is less than 100 go right else go left" users usually use the construct of a rule symbol "XOR" together with two following events "value < 100" and "value >= 100". So you see directly in the process where to root.
But as far as a decision is getting more complex it is worth to describe it in a rulesheet available with ARIS Business Rules Designer. The advantage of a rulesheet is that you can directly analyze and test it. This analyzing functionality helps you to find conflicts or missing rules. A typical example is that ">" is used instead of ">=". If you describe it only in a spreadsheet e.g. you have to find such a bug by yourself. So this would be nothing else than an other representation for the graphical way via rule sybmbols and events.
Therefore my recommendation is to use the grafical way in case of simple decisions and do rule modelling for all complex ones.