The most central issue to the topic of SOA Projects is determining what kind of SOA implementation the business needs. Does the business need agility, more integration, more visibility, lower costs or the best ability to adapt to change at all costs?
Amazingly when I did talk around about this to active SOA practitioners, I found many organizations that were big on SOA and said they need this agility for business competitiveness actually wanted rapid development shops that would band aid existing legacy applications with web services. Basically they were trying to roll out pilot projects that use latest web 2.0 technologies to solve some niche business problem that was hanging in the organization without being solved for a long time.
So before you are asked to lead or participate in a supposedly enterprise SOA project you need to ask yourself several questions to help determine what kind of SOA implementation you are working on:
<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->How strong is the organization need for rapid change?
<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Does the project's emphasis on agility arise because it is really one of the common SOA lookalikes?
<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Is your project limited by any weaknesses that would prevent a SOA success?
Not doing due diligence on finding SOA look-alikes will actually lead to the SOA leader being viewed as a stumbling block for organizational direction.
Here are some of my suggestions to identify the real SOA projects are,
Organization with Strong need for Agility
Organizations that truly need agility are in a market place where they are under constant competitive threat. If you observe these organizations they will have a fairly large portfolio of product and services with broad client base that demands services fairly quickly. The company must have attempted to reinvent itself once in its life time. The management will constantly be in a sense of urgency and looking for the next market leader by researching new technologies.
These organizations will have a strong culture oriented towards standards and systems. Many of them would have or will be in the process of getting certified by standards such as CMM or ISO or MSF etc. Keep away from organizations that say they have their own needs and hence need a standards and procedures that is unique to them, nine out of ten times these kind of organizations would have attempted the industry standard certifications and failed in adhering to them. Many times the reasons for not following industry standards and deriding them are basically sour grapes story.
Organizations with Strong IT Leaders
These organizations will have a strong IT professionals leading the production and delivery systems. With professional line managers in place the conceptual foundation for implementing a SOA architecture can be sold without difficulty. By having a high caliber production team will help the architectural team to work on design issues rather than fighting fires everyday.
Organizations with resilience
SOA is a long story and needs patience. If the organization cannot stomach failures and delays, then the SOA effort will change direction midway and will definitely turn into a SOA look alike.
Organizations with Strategic Sense
Finally you need to find whether your organization is attempting SOA as a strategic tool or using it as a tactical weapon. SOA for strategy is real SOA... SOA for tactical purpose SOA look alike. How do you find it... look at the past project history. If majority of the projects were done to pluck the low hanging fruits then the organization lack the will to mount the effort to grab the difficult but juicy fruits on the top of the tree.
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