States of the Business Concepts Model: Structural Assertions' Impact on Natural Language Business Rules

Organizations constantly need to adapt to the rapidly changing macro environment. Information systems, that hinder and restrain flexibility, may jeopardize the ability for organizations to survive. A new method for developing information systems called the Business Rules Approach has emerged with promises of business agility. The Business Rules Approach focuses on business rules which are reliant on a Business Concepts Model for their structure and vocabulary. This paper examines the relation between the business rules and the Business Concepts Model. We conclude that a Business Concepts Model with less participation facts between terms generally yield less complex rules and that a Business Concepts Model with more participation facts between terms generally yield more complex Business Rules. However the tradeoff for decreased complexity is a loss of the ability to talk about or verbalize certain terms. We conclude that generalization facts in the Business Concepts Model do not impact complexity of Business Rules. Finally, the ability to express Business Rules in natural language is not impacted by increases or decreases in Business Concepts Model complexity.