Governing Operational Decisions in an Enterprise Scalable Way

Governing Operational Decisions in an Enterprise Scalable Way

by Jonathon Carr, Eric Charpentier, Nigel Crowther, Guillaume Devillers, Sophie Fargier, Julie Holm
Released August 2017
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: 9780738442655

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Book description

Abstract

This IBM® Redbooks® publication introduces operational decision governance and describes in detail how to implement it using the IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) platform. ODM allows businesses to automate and manage day-to-day operational decisions. It provides an integrated repository and management components for line-of-business, subject-matter experts to directly participate in the definition and governance of rules-based decision logic, organized in decision services. Governance of changes to decision services is of particular importance and value.

This book describes how organizations can choose between the built-in ODM decision governance framework or a custom governance based on manually managed branches. Related topics, such as access control, permissions and user management, are covered and give a full view on decision service governance. You will find this book valuable if you are using or considering the usage of an operational decision management system in your organization, either with ODM on-premises or ODM on Cloud offerings.

This book was written to help assist the following target audience in applying Decision Management technology successfully:


  • IT Project Managers need to understand how decision governance differs from IT Governance, and how ODM straddles both worlds to facilitate agile change.

  • IT Technical Architects need to understand how to architect ODM to sit inside both the IT and business worlds.

  • Business Analysts need to understand the processes for changing business policies using ODM Decision Center.

  • Business Rule Development Teams need to understand the best way to structure rule projects for scalability and maintainability.

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    Table of contents

    1. Front cover
    2. Notices
      1. Trademarks
    3. Preface
      1. Authors
      2. Now you can become a published author, too
      3. Comments welcome
      4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
    4. Chapter 1. Introduction
      1. 1.1 Assumptions
        1. 1.1.1 The ODM components
      2. 1.2 Decision governance
        1. 1.2.1 The Benefits of decision governance
        2. 1.2.2 The Evolution of decision governance
      3. 1.3 The sample scenario
        1. 1.3.1 Loan Validation background
        2. 1.3.2 The Loan Validation solution
      4. 1.4 Book layout
    5. Chapter 2. Decision governance for project managers
      1. 2.1 Staffing the project team
      2. 2.2 Planning for decision governance
        1. 2.2.1 Governance within the first iteration
        2. 2.2.2 Governance tasks
        3. 2.2.3 Governance only process
      3. 2.3 Project risks and problems associated with decision governance
      4. 2.4 Changing your organization to realize your decision governance vision
        1. 2.4.1 The role of the Center of Excellence
      5. 2.5 Conclusion
    6. Chapter 3. Roles and responsibilities in governing decisions
      1. 3.1 Decision governance roles
      2. 3.2 Functional roles and responsibilities
        1. 3.2.1 Business roles
        2. 3.2.2 Business users
        3. 3.2.3 Technical roles
      3. 3.3 Secondary roles and responsibilities
        1. 3.3.1 Secondary business roles
        2. 3.3.2 Secondary technical roles
      4. 3.4 Clarifications about roles
      5. 3.5 Conclusion
    7. Chapter 4. Securing the Decision Center
      1. 4.1 Authentication
      2. 4.2 Access control levels
      3. 4.3 Permission patterns
      4. 4.4 Security configuration process
      5. 4.5 Sample team
      6. 4.6 Simple pattern
        1. 4.6.1 The Predefined Decision Center UI roles
        2. 4.6.2 Configuring WebSphere Application Server users and groups
        3. 4.6.3 Configuring Decision Center groups to roles mapping
      7. 4.7 Fine-grained pattern
        1. 4.7.1 Decision Center group permissions
        2. 4.7.2 Decision Center roles permission requirements
        3. 4.7.3 Decision Center Permissions Groups
        4. 4.7.4 Creating Decision Center users and groups
        5. 4.7.5 Enforcing Decision Center project security
        6. 4.7.6 Configuring Decision Center permissions
      8. 4.8 Project pattern
        1. 4.8.1 Defining LDAP Users & Groups
        2. 4.8.2 Adding LDAP registry to WebSphere Application Server Global Security
        3. 4.8.3 Configuring Decision Center role-to-group mapping
        4. 4.8.4 Configuring a Decision Center LDAP connection
        5. 4.8.5 Uploading LDAP Users and Groups in Decision Center
        6. 4.8.6 Configuring Decision Center project security
        7. 4.8.7 Configuring Decision Center permissions
      9. 4.9 Conclusion
    8. Chapter 5. Designing decision services
      1. 5.1 Concepts
        1. 5.1.1 Decision service
        2. 5.1.2 Execution object model
        3. 5.1.3 Business object model
      2. 5.2 Project hierarchies
        1. 5.2.1 Diamond-shaped project hierarchy
        2. 5.2.2 Our sample project hierarchy evolution
      3. 5.3 Folder structure
      4. 5.4 Orchestrating ruleset execution
      5. 5.5 Advanced topics
        1. 5.5.1 Adding projects
      6. 5.6 Conclusion
    9. Chapter 6. Processes
      1. 6.1 Introducing the business release process
        1. 6.1.1 Change activities
        2. 6.1.2 Validation activities
      2. 6.2 Documenting processes
      3. 6.3 Sample processes
      4. 6.4 The IT Centric Process
        1. 6.4.1 The initial IT release
        2. 6.4.2 Staying in IT: IT release for subsequent releases
      5. 6.5 The business release
        1. 6.5.1 Simple business rule change
        2. 6.5.2 Complex business rule change process
      6. 6.6 The technical release
      7. 6.7 Conclusion
    10. Chapter 7. Decision governance framework
      1. 7.1 Decision governance framework lifecycle
        1. 7.1.1 Release lifecycle
        2. 7.1.2 Change activity lifecycle
        3. 7.1.3 Validation activity lifecycle
      2. 7.2 A decision governance framework workflow pattern
        1. 7.2.1 The initial release
        2. 7.2.2 The first IT release
        3. 7.2.3 Validation activities
        4. 7.2.4 Business releases
        5. 7.2.5 Change activities
        6. 7.2.6 The IT release
      3. 7.3 Loan Validation Service illustration
        1. 7.3.1 Creating the initial release
        2. 7.3.2 Creating the first IT release
        3. 7.3.3 Validating IT Release 1
        4. 7.3.4 Completing IT Release 1
        5. 7.3.5 Creating Business Release 1
        6. 7.3.6 Changing Business release 1
        7. 7.3.7 Business Release 1 completion
      4. 7.4 Conclusion
    11. Chapter 8. Deployment
      1. 8.1 Choosing a deployment strategy
        1. 8.1.1 IT Centric deployments
        2. 8.1.2 Business Centric deployments
        3. 8.1.3 Two-phase deployment
      2. 8.2 Difference between production and non-production deployment
      3. 8.3 Versioning policies
        1. 8.3.1 RuleApp and ruleset versioning policy
        2. 8.3.2 Running against multiple deployed versions
      4. 8.4 Managing resources
        1. 8.4.1 Managed Java XOM
        2. 8.4.2 Enabling XOM management in Decision Center
      5. 8.5 Conclusion
    12. Chapter 9. ODM DevOps
      1. 9.1 IT Centric DevOps
        1. 9.1.1 Advantages
        2. 9.1.2 Disadvantages
        3. 9.1.3 IT Centric DevOps sequence
      2. 9.2 Business Centric DevOps
        1. 9.2.1 Advantages
        2. 9.2.2 Disadvantages
        3. 9.2.3 Regular cycle: Business change
        4. 9.2.4 Irregular cycle: Technical change
      3. 9.3 DevOps orchestration with UrbanCode Deploy
        1. 9.3.1 What is UrbanCode Deploy?
        2. 9.3.2 The UrbanCode Deploy ODM plug-ins
      4. 9.4 Suggested APIs for DevOps
      5. 9.5 Conclusion
    13. Chapter 10. ODM on Cloud
      1. 10.1 Considerations
      2. 10.2 IBM ODM components
      3. 10.3 User roles
      4. 10.4 Cloud environments
      5. 10.5 Workflow
        1. 10.5.1 Setting up the user roles
        2. 10.5.2 Collaborating to develop the decision service
        3. 10.5.3 Testing and promoting the decision service
      6. 10.6 IBM ODM on Cloud in a hybrid cloud environment
      7. 10.7 Conclusion
    14. Chapter 11. Branching and merging
      1. 11.1 Branching and merging to manage releases
        1. 11.1.1 Branching and merging
        2. 11.1.2 Snapshots
        3. 11.1.3 Naming conventions
      2. 11.2 Deployment events
        1. 11.2.1 Scenario A: Single executable service
        2. 11.2.2 Scenario B: Parallel executable services
      3. 11.3 Branching strategies
        1. 11.3.1 Main branch with snapshots only
        2. 11.3.2 Main branch with simple branches for changes
        3. 11.3.3 One branch per decision service version
        4. 11.3.4 Decision Governance Framework like branching
        5. 11.3.5 Advanced branching strategies
      4. 11.4 Example of branching and merging in IBM Operational Decision Manager
        1. 11.4.1 Leading practices
      5. 11.5 When to use branching and merging
      6. 11.6 Going from branching and merging to Decision Governance Framework
      7. 11.7 Conclusion
    15. Chapter 12. Conclusion
      1. 12.1 Where you go from here
    16. Appendix A. Acronyms
    17. Related publications
      1. IBM Redbooks
      2. Other publications
      3. Online resources
      4. Help from IBM
    18. Back cover

    Product information

    • Title: Governing Operational Decisions in an Enterprise Scalable Way
    • Author(s): Jonathon Carr, Eric Charpentier, Nigel Crowther, Guillaume Devillers, Sophie Fargier, Julie Holm
    • Release date: August 2017
    • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
    • ISBN: 9780738442655