A business rule is a brief, precise, and unambiguous description of a policy, procedure, or principle within a specific organization. In a sense, business rules are misnamed: they apply to any organization, large or small—a business, a government unit, a religious group, or a research laboratory—that stores and uses data to generate information.
Business rules, derived from a detailed description of an organization’s operations, help to create and enforce actions within that organization’s environment. Business rules must be rendered in writing and updated to reflect any change in the organization’s operational environment
To be effective, business rules must be easy to understand and widely disseminated, to ensure that every person in the organization shares a common interpretation of the rules. Business rules describe, in simple language, the main and distinguishing characteristics of the data as viewed by the company. Examples of business rules are as follows:
- A customer may generate many invoices
- An invoice is generated by only one customer
- A training session cannot be scheduled for fewer than 10 employees or for more than 30 employees.