"woolfel" wrote : Many of the cases I know of use a rule template approach. A rule template defines a given pattern, which users populate. When ever a new rule template is introduced, it goes through a rigorous validation and testing process. If a business analyst creates a new rule using an existing template, the risk is rather low. this reduces the cost of testing and validation. | exactly. i agree and come from a different perspective. my perspective is that business users see a projection of the actual software artifacts like rules and processes. if the 'moving parts' are restricted within the projection, business users can just do their thing without a need for a developer. a decision table spreadsheet is a good example of that. see also Keith Swenson http://kswenson.wordpress.com/2006/07/09/what-bpm-can-learn-from-a-spread... and me http://jboss.org/jbossBlog/blog/tbaeyens/2006/07/26/Clean_handoff_Collabo... "woolfel" wrote : having said that, using a BRMS (business rule management system) is best suited if the rules use a data driven approach like drools3, jrules, blaze, jess, etc. If the rules couple the data to the rules, then a BRMS approach is more painful and likely not useful. I don't know how jBPM works or whether it uses a data driven approach. If jBPM doesn't use a data driven approach, then I would agree a CVS/SVN approach is better suited. | i don't care about CVS/SVN either. but my reasoning is that sources should always be kept in sync by the process in which you develop software. not by software that tries to synchronize CVS with a runtime rules deployment server. in my opinion, in a general case, rules and processes cannot live outside a development environment. and development envs are typically managed by CVS/SVN so that is why i think that our efforts should go to trying to provide the tools so that business users operate on that repository. rather then a seperate repository and then end up with having to keep multiple repo's synchronized. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3964156#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...