was to be sure that the results they were getting from the rules-based software were
accurate, and to double-check the calculations that were going on inside it.
The author has found that this experience has been shared by other colleagues
who build software applications that have rules engine functionality. They, too, found
that users duplicated what the rules automation software was doing in order to check
the results it was providing.
How, Not What
A second symptom of the Black Box Problem also manifested itself early on in the
author’s business rules career. I found that I was called in on a number of occasions
to explain how certain numbers were calculated based on rules that the users them-
selves had defined. For these users it was important to ...