Overview

This document describes a new kind of decision table, the process-oriented decision table.
The process-oriented decision table makes it easier to create decision tables by enabling a step-by-step approach.

Decision tables are very practical to communicate complex logic e.g. from the business process designer to the software developer and the tester.

Wikipedia has a good introduction into decision tables which also introduces the "don't care" symbol: Wikipedia.

An alternative are directed graphs e.g.
- Event-driven process chain or EPC
- Unified_Modeling_Language or UML, especially the Activity diagram

But graphs grow big if the actions depend on many conditions. Decision tables are much more compact.

The well-known decision tables - as described in the Wikipedia article - have a problem: One needs to think hard to create the rules (see the example "Printer troubleshooter").

With process oriented decision tables there is a process which will lead you step-by-step to every possible rule. At the end there will be even mathematic checks.
Hence it is possible to forget conditions or actions but it is not possible to forget rules. Please let it sink in: With process oriented decision tables one can not forget rules.