The Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard is changing the practice of decision modeling and management. Up to now, it has primarily been used to define model-based decision requirements handed off to developers for implementation in some other rule language. DMN is good for that, and actually most tools that claim to support DMN cannot do any more than that. But DMN is much more than a language for defining business requirements.
My new book BPMN Quick and Easy is now available in the Kindle Textbook format. Kindle Textbook is a pdf-based (non-reflowable) format that preserves the graphics quality. It runs on Kindle for PC, tablets, and phones, but not on really old Kindle hardware. If you purchase the paperback you can get the Kindle format for something like $2.99. BPMN Quick and Easy provides a streamlined "mechanical" approach to creating Good BPMN out of the chaos of your stakeholder workshops and interviews.
Today my new book BPMN Quick and Easy Using Method and Style was published. You can get it on Amazon, and a Kindle Textbook version should follow next week. Where BPMN Method and Style 2nd Edition was a comprehensive reference, the new book is slimmed down, focusing on just the elements today's process modelers need to know. Based on the experience of delivering Method and Style training to thousands of students, it simplifies the BPMN vocabulary, methodology, and the style rules.
The analysts have mostly missed what's happening with DMN and its potentially disruptive impact on Digital Transformation, but Derek Miers of MWD Advisors gets it right in his latest report, "Decision Management Drives Disruption." What's fundamentally different about the DMN standard is that the standardization and accessibility of the notation is enabling a new wave of innovation... that has managed to overcome many of the limitations of previous attempts to move toward model-driven applications.
People sometimes ask me, what is Method and Style? For a quick marketing answer, you can watch this Ignite video. But if you want a concrete example, read on... Method and Style is a systematic approach to creating what I call "good BPMN"... not simply correct according to the spec, but models that fulfill BPMN's real mission, which is communicating the process logic visually, so that it is understood clearly and completely by those who don't already know how the process works.
The DMCommunity website regularly posts "challenges" through which decision management practitioners and vendors may compare their tools and solutions. The September challenge shows off DMN and FEEL particularly well. Here is the challenge, as stated: A human resource office has information about all employees in every department including: salary, marital status, age, etc. Help the office to create a decision model that for each department calculates minimal, maximal, and average salaries along with a number of high-paid employees using rules like “Salary > 85000”.
In July I discussed the features and benefits of the DMN Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK), which provides an ever-enlarging suite of DMN models, including test input values and expected outputs. The TCK website https://dmn-tck.github.io/tck/ then had 4 DMN tools listed. Now it has 6, as shown below: This is significant because the TCK is the true measure of support for "real" DMN. While OMG allows any tool vendor that can draw something approximating a DRD to claim DMN conformance, that is hardly the criterion for a modeling language standard.
I am happy to announce a new version of BPMN Method and Style training and certification using the Trisotech BPMN Modeler. I have offered live and live/online BPMN training for many years using itp commerce's Visio add-in and Signavio, but the effort to create web/on-demand training has always been limited this format to a single tool, itp commerce. Now we can offer a new world-class cloud/browser-based alternative for web/on-demand BPMN training.
DMN promises something truly revolutionary to the practice of decision management: a tool-independent, directly executable decision language for business users. Vendor implementations that fulfill that promise are emerging, albeit slowly. Unfortunately, many proprietary decision modeling tools have appropriated the DMN name as a marketing decal without conforming to the spirit, much less the letter, of this promise. Officially, DMN Conformance Level 1 requires a tool only to be able to draw a Decision Requirements Diagram and something that looks like a decision table, but does not require these diagrams to be executable or even valid.
An often repeated charge against DMN is that it makes iteration - a key feature of real-world decision logic - too difficult for business users. "It's programming!" they wail. "Business users can never understand this!" But actually, it's not so hard. To iterate a decision in DMN you must start with a list. Iteration simply means performing some bit of decision logic on each item in the list. For example, if you are a bank classifying assets for regulatory compliance, you iterate the classification decision over each asset in the list.