Ask HN: Do you recognize this problem? Ownership of Business Rules
In the spirit of failing early, I'd like to ask you for some feedback to see if a problem we've been facing quite a while at a small ISP also applies in other companies. A first check to see if this idea is viable.
As an ISP we deliver different flavors of internet and value added services. We have multiple brands, each with their own proposition, discounts, region specific value added services, etc.
To capture these business rules we've built a domain-specific business rule engine as a service. A serious omission however was leaving out the maintenance part, so every change to a proposition requires configuration effort from a developer.
I was wondering how general this problem is. From my perspective the essence boils down to operations on sets combined with some decision making logic, and could therefore be applicable in many contexts.
Would you be willing to pay for a solution that gives non-programmers (e.g. a Marketing & Sales department) the ability to configure the product portfolio using custom rules?
Some further characteristics about the solution:
- Developers will be able to configure their own API
- Configuration (changes) should be tested as well [0]
- Rules can be applied in a specific time frame (e.g. a customer registered two weeks ago) and are versioned.
I'm very interested in your take on this and welcome any feedback, advice, requirements, etc.
Thanks!
[0] http://workshop.unspace.ca/post/67567487259/duck-programming