Decision Model and Notation
 | This article, Decision Model and Notation, has recently been created via the Articles for creation process. Please check to see if the reviewer has accidentally left this template after accepting the draft and take appropriate action as necessary.
Reviewer tools: Inform author |
Decision Model and Notation
Decision Model and Notation (DMN).[1] is a standard published by the Object Management Group on 2014-01-16. Using this standard will ensure that decision models are interchangeable across organizations.
The DMN standard provides the industry with a modeling notation for decision management and business rules. The language is built to be readable by all its users in the business (as declared in chapter 1):
- the business people who manage and monitor the decisions,
- the business analysts or functional analysts who document the initial decision requirements and specify the detailed decision models and decision logic,
- the technical developers responsible for the automation of processes which use the decisions.
The DMN standard is complementary to the BPMN standard. The BPMN defines a special kind of activity, the Business Rule Task, which "provides a mechanism for the process to provide input to a business rule engine and to get the output of calculations that the business rule engine might provide"[2]. Together, BPMN and DMN may be used to more efficiently build process models[3].
Tools
The DMN standard is fairly young, but there are already several tools supporting the DMN notation.
- Decision First Modeler by Decision Management Solutions
- OpenRules
- SMARTS Pencil by Sparkling Logic
More and more companies start to support DMN in their tools, e.g. Signavio, FlexRule and IBM.
References
- ^ Decision Model and Notation (DMN), current version
- ^ BPMN standard, current version
- ^ The MicroGuide to Process and Decision Modeling in BPMN/DMN: Building More Effective Processes by Integrating Process Modeling with Decision Modeling by Tom Debevoise, James Taylor, et al. [1]