Analysis Overview

If you are tasked with creating a JRules project from scratch, you might want to consider performing the following steps in the following order

1. Model the business process that you wish to automate
2. Select one task in some part of the process model. Your rules project will automate this task.
3. Identify project constituencies who might be affected by this task
4. Identify meangingful actors who perform some part of this task
5. Create one or more use case that describe the way actors collaborate to perform this task
6. Convert each use case into analysis classes
7. Identify decision points within each use case
8. Synthesize entity classes into logical data items
9. Synthesize those logical data items into the actual classes and / or XML schemas that will populate your business object model
10. Synthesize decision points and control classes into high level rules

This approach will lead you to design a business object model (BOM) that matches your project needs. In a large enterprise, you may well have to do some mapping to make this business object model match your enterprise executable object model (XOM).