My background is focused mainly on business rules. But as I have been reading more on the subject and have been expanding my knowledge, I was seeing more and more topics touching on business processes. The more I read about it the more I find that I should have caught that relationship or at least the implications of that relationship much sooner.

The business uses processes to perform its work. Business Rules are there to support the processes. The relationship has been there for a long time, but I suppose that my exposure to business rules through products that were mostly business rules oriented, I had been blind to the connection.

As I was reflecting more on the subject, it seems to me that one can’t work well without the other, so I started exposing myself more to the business process side of things.

My visit to the Business Rules Forum in october 2008 also confirmed that this is something that a lot of people are connecting together and a lot of the talks touched on the subject. One of the talks (and then I saw that reference used many other times during the conference) referred to the fact that business has been using the terms ”Policies and Procedures” for a long time. Procedures being the business process aspect, policies being the business rules aspect. Why didn’t I see that before?

Well there you have it. Although I initially was thinking that my work would focus on business rules, it turns out that business processes will also play an important role in what I am doing. So I am educating myself (have been for a while now). Although my initial focus was to be on business rules, chances are you will see more on the topic of business processes, business process management, etc. in this blog the future.