The Business Complexity of a DMN Model
An Accurate Complexity Calculation Guide
Picture this: you're a DMN decision modeler, about to embark on a new project. You're excited, a little nervous, and ready to face the challenges that lie ahead. But there's one thing you can't control - the complexity of the business or business unit you're about to tackle.
A few examples of complex business logic:
an extensive set of anti-money laundering, fraud checks, anti-terrorism controls and the like when accepting new customers or granting credit, imposed by international and local regulators on financial institutions or law firms.
estimating excess mortality risk when taking out a life insurance policy based on all kinds of risk factors for specific pathologies, on the basis of which the life insurance can then be granted and the premiums to be paid can be adapted to the actual risk.
the parameters that a self-driving car must take into account when cornering, avoiding accidents and saving energy.
Most likely DMN decision models will never form the basis for the logic of self-driving cars, but we can't deny the fact that business complexity is here to stay, and it's only going to get more intricate. Let's face it, we live in a world where the demands on products, services, and compliance with rules and legislation are constantly increasing.
The influence on DMN decision models is manifold:
the more extensive the logic to be mapped, the higher the pressure on the readability and transparency of your models;
and the higher the business complexity, the more work to fully develop and test a decision model.
But first of all: how can you objectively determine whether you are dealing with a low, medium or high business complexity? When confronted with a decision model, can you quickly and accurately determine its degree of complexity? And how do you handle that?
The good news is that a decision model’s business complexity is not only perfectly measurable, but that the result is a constant, completely independent of the way the decision model is constructed.
This article provides an accurate guide to calculate a DMN model’s business complexity, and most importantly to determine the importance of spending additional effort on your DMN decision model for readability purposes.