Decision Management (ODM,ADS)

It's been great seeing some of the recent threads on using #OperationalDecisionManager(ODM)on #IBMZOS(links below) as it reiterated for me a key thread in my experience the last 20 years - that a focus on #DecisionAutomationcan make your systems simpler, smarter and more agile regardless of the platform you are using - you don't need to change the PLATFORM to change the APPLICATION.


Instead, take your application and identify the decisions within it - does it DECIDE who's eligible? calculate (decide) on the price, discount or commission? decide what documents are required or who has to sign them? must it decide which transactions are fraudulent, wasteful or risky? All of these are operational business decisions. And if the way you make those decisions is embedded in your code then your application is going to be more complex than it needs to be (because code is bad at managing business decisions), stupider than it needs to be (because you can't apply advanced analytics to it) and harder to change than it needs to be.

Separating out decisions and managing them using tools like #odmor #AutomationDecisionServices(ADS)improves your applications in three ways:

1. Simpler.
   Remove decision-making from the code in a coherent way and the remaining code is much simpler, more stable and easier to understand. Process flows are more direct, user interfaces are simplified and much more.
2. Smarter
   Decision-making is where you can apply machine learning and predictive analytics. Separating out the decision-making makes it much easier to see what kind of analytics will improve things and so make your application smarter.
3. More Agile
   A #businessrulesmanagement system makes it easy to change, test, simulate and deploy changes to your decision-making, Especially if you use a decision model to frame the requirements, business owners and analysts can be more directly involved and your time to respond will drop.

And all these benefits work regardless of the platform you deploy on - even if you need to deploy the same rules and decisioning to multiple platforms (to Z for bulk processing, to support a mobile app for single transactions and to help your chat bot make decisions).

You don't have to re-platform your applications to improve them.

--

Useful links:

• ​@Chris Backhouse did a great webinar on Modernize from the inside out: How digital decisioning can improve agility in your Z applications (on demand recording here and slides here).
• He also has a webinar coming up next week on Make smarter decisions: Apply intelligence to your Z applications with digital decisioning
• @Lori Brown had a nice post on Modernizing z/OS applications with ODM for z/OS and ADDI
• ​​​​​I wrote a paper for IBM on Transforming Operational Systems back in 2015 that discusses how to integrate #businessrulesand #MachineLearningon Z
• I have a white paper on Simplify Legacy Modernization with Decision Management on our website (free registration required)

​​​​​​​​

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James Taylor
CEO
Decision Management Solutions
Palo Alto CA
16504003029
james@decisionmanagementsolutions.com
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Thanks for this, James.  I love thinking about a successful business as one who makes the best decisions.

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DAVID Jenness
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Original Message:
Sent: Wed March 23, 2022 01:08 PM
From: James Taylor
Subject: Building simpler, smarter and more agile mainframe applications

It's been great seeing some of the recent threads on using #OperationalDecisionManager(ODM)on #IBMZOS(links below) as it reiterated for me a key thread in my experience the last 20 years - that a focus on #DecisionAutomationcan make your systems simpler, smarter and more agile regardless of the platform you are using - you don't need to change the PLATFORM to change the APPLICATION.


Instead, take your application and identify the decisions within it - does it DECIDE who's eligible? calculate (decide) on the price, discount or commission? decide what documents are required or who has to sign them? must it decide which transactions are fraudulent, wasteful or risky? All of these are operational business decisions. And if the way you make those decisions is embedded in your code then your application is going to be more complex than it needs to be (because code is bad at managing business decisions), stupider than it needs to be (because you can't apply advanced analytics to it) and harder to change than it needs to be.

Separating out decisions and managing them using tools like #odmor #AutomationDecisionServices(ADS)improves your applications in three ways:

1. Simpler.
   Remove decision-making from the code in a coherent way and the remaining code is much simpler, more stable and easier to understand. Process flows are more direct, user interfaces are simplified and much more.
2. Smarter
   Decision-making is where you can apply machine learning and predictive analytics. Separating out the decision-making makes it much easier to see what kind of analytics will improve things and so make your application smarter.
3. More Agile
   A #businessrulesmanagement system makes it easy to change, test, simulate and deploy changes to your decision-making, Especially if you use a decision model to frame the requirements, business owners and analysts can be more directly involved and your time to respond will drop.

And all these benefits work regardless of the platform you deploy on - even if you need to deploy the same rules and decisioning to multiple platforms (to Z for bulk processing, to support a mobile app for single transactions and to help your chat bot make decisions).

You don't have to re-platform your applications to improve them.

--

Useful links:

• ​@Chris Backhouse did a great webinar on Modernize from the inside out: How digital decisioning can improve agility in your Z applications (on demand recording here and slides here).
• He also has a webinar coming up next week on Make smarter decisions: Apply intelligence to your Z applications with digital decisioning
• @Lori Brown had a nice post on Modernizing z/OS applications with ODM for z/OS and ADDI
• ​​​​​I wrote a paper for IBM on Transforming Operational Systems back in 2015 that discusses how to integrate #businessrulesand #MachineLearningon Z
• I have a white paper on Simplify Legacy Modernization with Decision Management on our website (free registration required)

​​​​​​​​

------------------------------
James Taylor
CEO
Decision Management Solutions
Palo Alto CA
16504003029
james@decisionmanagementsolutions.com
------------------------------