This tutorial takes you through decision table methodology, including best practices, examples and experiences with different decision representations, for modeling decision rules by business experts in real business situations (insurance, legislation, credit scoring, operating procedures, …).

Business decisions are important, but are often hidden in process flows and process activities. Separating decisions from the process simplifies the process model. The new DMN (Decision Model and Notation) standard emphasizes the importance of business decisions, and also offers a standard notation and expression for decision requirements and decision logic.

Decision logic modeling can take many forms, depending on the the decision at hand, but decision tables are an important element. Decision tables have always been known for their ability to offer a compact, readable and managable representation of decision logic. But many do not realize how the decision table concept has been refined throughout the years into a strict and powerful modeling technique (based on consistency by construction, normalization, completeness, correctness, …)..

What you will learn:

• The concepts, objectives and application areas of decision tables for business analysis and business processes
• An overview of advantages and disadvantages of different types of decision tables (different hit policies).
• A simple 8 step method to construct good decision tables, starting from the description of the decision and leading to compact, normalized and optimized decision tables
• But mainly: lessons from a long experience on how to build, analyze, verify and optimize decision table models according to simple guidelines.