Book excerpt: This IBM® Redbooks® publication introduces operational decision governance and describes in detail how to implement it using the IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) platform. ODM allows businesses to automate and manage day-to-day operational decisions. It provides an integrated repository and management components for line-of-business, subject-matter experts to directly participate in the definition and governance of rules-based decision logic, organized in decision services. Governance of changes to decision services is of particular importance and value. This book describes how organizations can choose between the built-in ODM decision governance framework or a custom governance based on manually managed branches. Related topics, such as access control, permissions and user management, are covered and give a full view on decision service governance. You will find this book valuable if you are using or considering the usage of an operational decision management system in your organization, either with ODM on-premises or ODM on Cloud offerings. This book was written to help assist the following target audience in applying Decision Management technology successfully: IT Project Managers need to understand how decision governance differs from IT Governance, and how ODM straddles both worlds to facilitate agile change. IT Technical Architects need to understand how to architect ODM to sit inside both the IT and business worlds. Business Analysts need to understand the processes for changing business policies using ODM Decision Center. Business Rule Development Teams need to understand the best way to structure rule projects for scalability and maintainability.