Building a long-lived product is a demanding process - and creating one that handles critical operations in the systems of the largest enterprises is no small undertaking. In this context, success is not determined by the number of features or the flashiness of presentations. Four criteria become decisive: stability, reliability, security, and - the foundation of any BRE - performance. Maintaining a clear focus on these core qualities during product development is essential to ensure the product meets the highest standards.
This article opens a series on how to build a product that remains a core tool for clients for years, using Higson, our BRE, as an example. It presents a practical look at how everyday work and proper management of flow directly influence quality. In the next parts, other perspectives will also appear, such as team culture and planning without chaos. I will also touch on the future of decision automation. The goal of this series is simple: to share experience gained from working on a long-cycle product. Higson is an excellent choice for organizations seeking a fast rules engine built for longevity and reliability.
Introduction to Business Rules
Business rules are the backbone of every organization, shaping how decisions are made and guiding daily operations. At their core, business rules define the logical conditions and actions that drive business processes, ensuring consistency and compliance across the organization. A business rules engine is a specialized software system designed to manage, execute, and maintain these rules efficiently. By externalizing business logic from application code, a business rules engine empowers organizations to manage and modify rules independently of the underlying system, reducing development time and increasing agility.
With a rules engine, companies can define, test, and execute business rules in a controlled environment, making it easier to adapt to changing business needs without extensive coding expertise. This separation of rules from application code not only streamlines complex rule management but also enhances transparency and control over decision logic. While business users gain the ability to modify rules as requirements evolve, robust testing and quality assurance remain essential to ensure reliable rule execution. Ultimately, a well-implemented business rules engine enables organizations to manage all the rules that govern their operations, supporting both stability and innovation in a rapidly changing world.
Types of Rule Engines
Rule engines come in several forms, each tailored to different decision processes and execution strategies. The most common type found in business environments is the forward chaining rules engine. These engines evaluate data and logical conditions to determine which rules to execute, making them ideal for scenarios where actions are triggered by incoming information. Forward chaining engines can be further divided into production rule engines, which execute rules when explicitly called by a user or application often in a stateless manner and reactive rule engines, which automatically respond to events and typically maintain state throughout rule execution.
Some business rules engines also support backward chaining, a goal-driven approach where the engine works backward from a desired outcome, evaluating which rules and data are needed to achieve that goal. This method is well suited for complex decision trees and scenarios where the path to a solution is not immediately clear. Deterministic engines, on the other hand, avoid chaining altogether and use domain-specific languages to describe policies, offering a straightforward way to implement workflow rules for well-defined processes.
For cases involving uncertainty or incomplete information, fuzzy logic-based inference engines provide a powerful way to execute rules using heuristics rather than strict Boolean logic. These engines excel in applications like customer classification, missing data inference, and customer value calculations, where nuanced decision logic is required. By understanding the strengths of each type of rules engine, organizations can select the ideal choice for their specific business needs, ensuring high performance and effective rule processing across large volumes of data.
Performance as the Foundation of a BRE
When talking about the fastest business rules engine on the market, the mind naturally jumps to technical tricks that improve performance. In reality, it starts with responsible product design and careful development, where innovation must meet security and stability.
This includes roadmap decisions, but even more so, daily ones. They concern the code itself, the functional scope, adherence to hexagonal architecture, preserving stability, and much more. Developers play a key role in optimizing performance and maintaining code quality throughout the lifecycle of the rules engine. The choice of programming language and how core components are written directly impact the speed and efficiency of the rules engine.
Here, performance is not an add-on - it is the filter through which every business and technical decision is evaluated. Efficient handling of rule changes is also crucial for maintaining high performance in dynamic business environments.
A Long-Term Perspective
Enterprise products operating in clients’ critical processes have long life cycles. This means that the code and features built today must function reliably for a long time.
Project decisions therefore need a long-range perspective that considers their impact on multiple areas, such as:
- the current functioning of the system and preservation of core functionality,
- the attractiveness and competitiveness of the product,
- backward compatibility - essential for existing clients,
- the workflow and efficiency of the product team,
- maintenance costs,
- flexibility that enables further product development,
- the structure of the rule management system, which is crucial for supporting long-term scalability and maintainability.
With this in mind, it’s important to design not only features, but also space for the product to evolve - so that it does not become “cemented” by internal decisions. The system is designed to accommodate rule changes efficiently over time, ensuring adaptability as requirements shift.
Collaboration between business and technical teams ensures the product continues to evolve and meet changing requirements.
Invisible Work as a Determinant of Quality
The most challenging elements of patch and LTS releases are often those that do not fall into the category of “hot topics.” These are areas that do not sound exciting and are not visible from the outside - yet they provide the foundation for product stability. This includes, of course: \
- optimizations,
- refactoring,
- security improvements,
- maintaining up-to-date components,
- development of e2e tests, and much more.
Ongoing development of advanced features is also a key part of this invisible work, ensuring the product remains robust and maintains long-term quality.
These actions do not appear in marketing communication, nor do they position the product as following the latest trends - but they are exactly what builds trust among enterprise clients.
If a product operates in underwriting, pricing, fraud detection or scoring, “it works” is not enough - it must work reliably. A rules based approach is fundamental here, as it enables the system to deliver consistent and reliable results in these critical applications.
PM as a Partner - Not a Decision-Maker
In products with such high responsibility, the PM’s role is to ensure decisions are conscious, consistent, and aligned with the long-term direction.
On a daily basis, this primarily means conversations about technical consequences of various initiatives. Reacting automatically to a client’s request or to market trends can have harmful long-term effects on the product’s stability.
Business needs should be communicated to the team, which knowing the product and having experience working with clients - is capable of finding the right solution.
A PM’s job is to think and act with the client’s needs in mind.
At the same time, a mature PM must be able to say “no” when a requested feature or change carries significant risk. Very often, an initiative proposed by a client, when viewed from the perspective of the entire product, could do more harm than good - and ultimately hurt the client as well.
In such situations, communication becomes an art.
Based on experience, the most effective approach is first to deeply understand the client’s actual problem, so that the team can address the need and propose an alternative solution. Many times, the product already offers a way to solve the issue. In other cases, the problem enters the backlog - but in a different form than originally requested. The shape of the solution is then the result of understanding the client’s needs and the product team’s expertise.
A PM should always keep in mind that the core of a long-cycle product is stability.
Designing for the Long Run Always Pays Off
A product like Higson is not created in a week, and its strategic development is never accidental.
Its current form is the result of responsible decisions and disciplined design. The work of the team is consistently oriented toward the client, and the shared goal is to build a secure product that delivers the highest possible performance.
It is this project responsibility - based on long-term thinking - that makes Higson the solution chosen to support the core processes of our clients. Not because it promises speed, but because it delivers it, with full attention to stability and security.
Summary
In summary, building a fast rules engine that stands the test of time requires a balanced focus on performance, stability, and security. A well-designed business rules engine enables organizations to efficiently manage and execute complex business rules, empowering both technical teams and business users to adapt quickly to changing requirements. By prioritizing long-term maintainability, seamless collaboration between business and technical teams, and responsible product design, solutions like Higson deliver reliable, high-performance decision automation that supports critical enterprise processes with confidence.
Take Full Control of Your Product Logic
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