Editorial Review:
“Automated decisions systems are probably already being used in your industry, and they will undoubtedly grow in importance. If your business needs to make quick, accurate decisions on an industrialized scale, you need to read this book.” Thomas H. Davenport, Professor, Babson College, Author of Competing on Analytics The computer-based systems most organizations rely on to support their businesses are not very smart. Many of the business decisions these companies make tend to be hidden in systems that make poor decisions, or don’t make them at all. Further, most systems struggle to keep up with the pace of change. The answer is not to implement newer, “intelligent” systems. The fact is that much of today’s existing technology has the potential to be “smart enough” to make a big difference to an organization’s business. This book tells you how. Although the business context and underlying principles are explained in a nontechnical manner, the book also contains how-to guidance for more technical readers. The book’s companion site, www.smartenoughsystems.com, has additional information and references for practitioners as well as news and updates. Additional Praise for Smart (Enough) Systems “James Taylor and Neil Raden are on to something important in this book–the tremendous value of improving the large number of routine decisions that are made in organizations every day.” Dr. Hugh J. Watson, Chair of Business Administration, University of Georgia “This is a very important book. It lays out the agenda for business technology in the new century–nothing less than how to reorganize every aspect of how a company treats its customers.” David Raab, President, ClientXClient “This book is an important contribution to business productivity because it covers the opportunity from both the business executive’s and technologist’s perspective. This should be on every operational executive’s and every CIO’s list of essential reading.” John Parkinson, Former CTO, Capgemini, North American Region “This book shows how to use proven technology to make business processes smarter. It clearly makes the case that organizations need to optimize their operational decisions. It is a must-have reference for process professionals throughout your organization.” Jim Sinur, Chief Strategy Officer, Global 360, Inc.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Great Book for Application Architect  2008-03-16
Rules management really a big thing these days. It is one of the best technologies for lowering IT costs. Rules empower business users and subject matter experts to view, change and simulate change impact of rules in an enterprise. This book is packed with great ideas and a good overview of business rules management from "why rules?", rule harvesting, rule management and rule execution.
The excellent section on Rule Templates was a turning point for my cognition of how metadata registries can be used with rules engines. Conditionals can reference data elements and actions can change states of XML instances.
One of the two author's is Jim Taylor who is a VP at Fair Issac. Despite this fact the book does a pretty good job of looking at the rule process not a specific rules engine.
My only criticism with the book is it is very light on the topic of semantics, metadata registries and rules. There is a little coverage of the process of getting business users to write precise, concise definitions for business terms and the management and traceability of those definitions. A rule is only as good as the definitions for the business terms they reference. If you combine a good rules management system with an solid ISO/IEC 11179 metadata registry you can get the rule precision you need. Anything less could lead to chaos when everyone uses private definitions of business terms to express duplicate rules.
Natural Successor to "Competing on Analytics"  2007-09-16
Most business persons associated with the technology aspects of their firms now understand that the importance of intelligence in general to beat the competition has increased rapidly over the last couple decades. Much of the business world, however, has not been aware of this need until recently. For example, the September 15th-21st 2007 issue of the Economist magazine included an article entitled "Business by Numbers" that covered some aspects of business intelligence, but with an aura of mystery as though the reader was not yet aware of the subject matter. Just several months ago, Harvard Business School Press released the first mainstream work on competitive intelligence, which was long overdue (see my review for that work). While "Competing on Analytics" focused on introducing the reader to competitive intelligence, however, James Taylor and Neil Raden take the next step by presenting an exhaustive survey of current thoughts on business intelligence in general and how it might deliver on its promises to businesses by moving to the next step in providing automated decision making. In his Six Sigma related works, M. Daniel Sloan (see my reviews for his works) stresses the importance of evidence-based decision making that is based on data and not guesswork. The importance of using software systems to enable automated decision making is what "Smart (Enough) Systems" is all about. While chapters 1 and 2 start off slowly and are a bit academic in nature, they set the stage for the remainder of the text. Chapter 3 is incredibly well-written. It provides a history of how technology has been used in business decision making, and how data warehousing entered the picture. This chapter also provides some very well-worded discussions on what distinguishes data warehousing from business intelligence. However, the reader is repeatedly reminded throughout the book that enterprise decision management (EDM) does not just provide business data in different formats in order that business persons can interpret the information manually. EDM actually provides a large portion of these interpretations. The amount of data in software systems throughout the world is rising exponentially, and Raden and Taylor explain that this automation is necessary in order that crucial opportunities for more effective competition not be missed. Many of the decisions that need to be made with this data just cannot wait for human analysis. The next few chapters after chapter 3 expound on the earlier material, and the rest of the text explains the various ways that EDM might be adopted by businesses. Unlike "Competing on Analytics", the material in the latter half of "Smart (Enough) Systems" is not lightweight and cannot be read in an afternoon. Davenport and Harris explain very well the "what", but Raden and Taylor stress the "how". Both the content and the number of graphs and diagrams that Raden and Taylor provide are excellent and accompany the material well. Updated information on various topics that I have not seen elsewhere are also included in the book, such as Figure 10.11 which depicts how industry software project failures have dropped over time, but the portion of these failures due to requirements errors has remained consistent. In addition, side bars throughout the book present case studies that explain how the EDM way contrasts with the old way of doing things, and the benefits provided by EDM in these scenarios. I do not expect this seminal work by Raden and Taylor to sit on bookshelves but to be actively referenced by its readership.
A book that spans two worlds and helps you make better decisions 2007-08-28
Smart Enough Systems is a book with one foot in two worlds. At one level, it is a business book addressing the issues of using information and decision support. On the other level it is almost a BI/DSS for the less intelligent in terms of its step by step guidance on working through these issues. Fortunately the books premise regarding automating hidden decisions requires a bit of both.
As a business book, Smart Enough covers the need to explain the concepts in business terms and provide a framework for generating ROI. It does not talk in great depth about how decisions drive competitive advantage. It is also a little weak on the explanation of where to apply this technique as I doubt enterprises will make the funding available to automate all of their decisions.
As a technology book, the author focuses on Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) is the primary focus of this book and it is described as applying a services approach to decision making. This looks to take business rules out of IT systems and put them into something akin to a decision service broker/service so the same situations are handled with the same set of rules.
The book is a solid and complete explanation of the author's ideas. Taylor and Raden focus on the systems aspects of EDM and their automation. This leads into a discussion of decision types and how they are automated. Here Taylor and Raden do well to illustrate these concepts, although the reader often encounters graphics and statements that are more than a bit dated.
The book would have been greatly helped with a clear and consistent case study application of its concepts. It also would have benefited from understanding the nature of decision systems support (DSS) a discipline that has been around for more than 30 years which is only discussed in a single sentence and again from a technology perspective.
This is a solid book by a professional who certainly understands the technical implications of his ideas - enterprise decision management. However, by trying to stand in both worlds it excels in neither. I would recommend this book more as a technical and implementation guide rather than as an executive business book. In that regard it has a place in IT but probably not in the Boardroom.
For me this book defines agility and explains how to approach it 2007-08-22
It seemed to me that the systems that run our business process are really controlled by a few elite IT professionals and programers. Unfortunately, they can't really be as responsive as they like our we need.
This book helps me to understand how my policies, rules and decisions can be lifted up a level where we can more directly influence.
Great read.
Verbosity & cliche' obscure important messages  2007-08-12
Wouldn't take a very sharp blue pencil to trim this down. Even well-defined terms like blackbox and whitebox testing are obscured in the buzzspeak grinder. Had to stop reading in frustration; maybe the blogs will help.
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