Engineering the Business Layer of the Decision Enterprise

We introduce the notion of a decision problem, DP to engineer the decision enterprise at the business layer. A DP is the gap between the expected and the actual business situation requiring a decision. Whereas, in the narrow sense, a DP bridges the gap through the decision-making activity, we propose to place a DP in its larger decision context where pre-requisite decision problems of the given narrow problem are also considered. Thus, we capture the entire business decision process behind the narrow problem. A model for decision problems is presented in which a DP can be decomposed into a Cartesian hierarchy of sub-problems. Decision problems at a Cartesian level show dependencies among each other. This allows construction of the Decision Problem Dependency Diagram, DPDD, as a graph with DPs as nodes and dependencies as edges. Decision problems at leaves of the Cartesian Hierarchy require decision making in the narrow sense. We illustrate our proposals with an example.