Our friend Jacob posted a Decision Management challenge this month. SaaS pricing can prove to be a challenge to calculate when combining volume discount and special incentive. In this challenge, I demonstrate how to take advantage of test cases to safely write these pricing rules. Click here to watch the demo
Key takeaways from this challenge
As I hinted, testing against expected outcome is saving a ton of time during rules writing. While I ran into several typos in my data entry, I felt comfortable that my rules were correct (after correcting the data entry).
Seeing is believing. Being able to see what the rules assign to each tier allows for a quick understanding of what was left to do.
Finally, not seeing calculations in place would have likely taken me a lot more time (and a headache) to complete that challenge. It helps a great deal to rely on intermediate calculations when rules end up somewhat convoluted.
While this is a simple pricing use case, business rules can quickly create a combinatorial explosion of scenarios. Decompose your problem in a few simple steps, check that your progress, until you cover all of your test cases.
- what tier do you start in
- move extra units to the next tier
- apply special incentive if applicable
If you want to try building the demo by yourself, feel free to ask for a free evaluation.
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