Within organizations decisions are made frequently and have an important impact on reaching the organization's organizations goals. Decisions are made using logic, even if that is not always obvious. There are many organizations that have automated their operational decision making using software. Blueriq is a platform that is often used to make decisions.automate (parts of) the decision making process.

This chapter discusses how decision management is supported in Blueriq by means of Decision Requirements Graphs.

Decision Requirements Graph (DRD)

Blueriq adopted the Object Modeling Group (OMG) Therefore, Blueriq adopted OMG's standard of Decision Model and Notation (DMN) with regards to the Decision Requirements Graph Diagram (DRGDRD). However, some constructs in Blueriq's DRG differ from the standardThis means that Blueriq generates a DRD at design time in Encore, based on the decisions and sub decisions that have been modeled. Furthermore, Blueriq uses a DRG in designtime offers a DRD at design time and a slightly different DRG in at runtime.

...

For more info on DRGs see Decision Requirements Diagram or DRD in Encore

Design time Decision Requirements

...

Diagram

When creating a business model in Blueriq, one must always aim to model decisions that can be easliy understood by the business. To verify whether the level of complexity of th decisions is acceptable, a DRG can be generated at any time in the design process. This DRG is then used to visualize the decision and its sub decisions and by that give insight to a business engineer and for instance an analyst on how this particular decision is made. 

1. Analyze if subdecisions are already available and reusable
2. Analyse if inputs are already available and reuseable
3. Start with the main decision 
   1. Create an attribute for the main decision, use the functional name to set a name for the decision that is meaningful for the business.
   2. Create all the attributes (if not already available) that are needed as an input. 
   3. Create the logic that is needed to infer a value for the main decision. Give the logic a useful functional name if possible
4. Repeat step 3 for all subdecions in each layer of the graph until all sub-decisions are modeled
5. Check the model using the DRG in studio.

Runtime Decision Requirements Graph

text

Constructs of the Decision Requirements Graph

text

Decisions

text

Business knowledge models

text

Input data

text

Knowledge source

text

Constructs of Decision Modeling in Blueriq

text

Attributes

text

Sources

text

Business rules

text

Decision tables

text

Default expressions

text

Data rules

designing a decision, make use of the Decision Requirements Diagram (DRD), depicted by a scale icon:Image Added.
(for more info on and where to open DRGs see Decision Requirements Diagram or DRD in Encore)

Let us say we are modeling a simple decision that determines whether someone will receive a discount on some sort of insurance.
Females are eligible for this discount, males are not. The decision requirements graph will probably look something like the one shown below.
In Encore, use Ctrl-click on the various elements to open them and verify that the discount is modeled correctly.

Image Added

Although even for simple decisions the DRD is useful while designing or reviewing, the true strength of the DRD is exemplified when designing or reviewing multi-layered complex decisions. See the example DRD below, that shows the decision that determines Strategy. At level 1 this decision looks trivial.

Image Added

When expanded to the next level, it shows that the decision consists of two separate decisions.

Image Added

At level 4 the we find that there are in fact many more decisions in play:

Image Added

It is possible to completely expand all decisions, knowledge models, input data and sources in one single graph, but this will most likely result in a diagram that is not usable for any type of audience. Therefore it is advised to expand sub decisions in separate DRDs. Shown below is such a DRD for the sub decision Bureau call type.

Image Added

In the examples above, knowledge sources are shown. These knowledge sources appear in a DRD when a specification is linked to a decision (decision table, business rule, attribute with expression, etc.).

Runtime Decision Requirements Graph

Although OMG´s standard DMN does not contain any specifications for it, Blueriq also uses a runtime decision requirements graph. This graph resembles the design time decision requirements diagram, but differs mainly with regards to the fact that it shows all given answers and derived values. See the example below.

More information about the DRG in runtime can be found here: Decision Requirements Graph or DRG in runtime

...