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PURPOSE
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The purpose of this document is to document business terminology (vocabular), their related business rules, and decisions made based on the rules, relevant to a particular business domain.
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From a terminology standpoint, there are two parts of speech captured and defined: terms (nouns) and actions (verbs). The terms are the words or phrases that have significance and specific meaning in the context of a particular business domain, especially that part of the organization relevant to a project. Terms include people-based constructs such as organizational unit names and functional roles as well as "things" that are acted on by those organizations and roles. Actions are those verbs that have significance and particular meaning in the context of the business domain, and so should also be documented here. The simple rule-of-thumb is any term or action used in the context of the business activity involved should be enumerated here.
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From these list of words and phrases, the language of the domain can be documented and shared, and all using this resource can develop a common and consistent understanding and usage in all situations. Beyond this document, other artifacts (e.g. concept maps, process maps, requirements documents) can be derived that adhere to the agreed upon terms, verbs, and their domain-specific meanings. Within this document itself, business rules can be correctly captured and interpreted.
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There are two types of business rules: behavioral rules which shape business conduct (including but not limited to conduct by people, process, technology), and definitional/structural rules which shape business knowledge. Definitional rules can be identified by the explicit use of the verb "is" in the statement about the term or implicitly assumed when stating, say, a functional definition as a phrase rather than a complete sentence. (E.g. "Admit" is defined as "An admissions applicant who has been admitted to UNF." This could be rewritten as "An Admit IS an admissions applicant who has been admitted to UNF.") Definitional rules may underlie some or all of the business terms involved, thus they are in most cases documented here under "Terms (Nouns)". However, the formally documented "Business Rules" are typically of the behavioral type. This type of rule can be identified by the use of the verbs "must", "only", "may" and "need not" in the statement. (Technically, the use of either of the latter two terms without using either of the former makes it a Statement of Advice rather than a Business Rule Statement, but for the purposes of this document all statements can be considered business rules.)
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Business rules do not indicated when they are invoked, i.e. triggered by means of events or "flash points". This is actually an implementation topic. Thus, such triggers are more appropriately documented in business processes (e.g. using Business Process Modeling Notation, aka BPMN) which should then reference the business rules. However, again, such information could be included here as notes to help clarify.
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