SOA Lookalike

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.

Organizations with Strong Standards Orientation

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.

SOA, BPM, Six Sigma and IT Projects...what is the scope here?

The past three weeks I had a hectic training schedule. First I was in a SOA Architecture Boot camp, week later I was in a course ware on Lean Management from MIT looking at ways to accelerate process efficiency. The thing that struck me in both the courses were the involvement of Six Sigma Black belts in show casing process improvement methodologies. I had the opportunity to look at real life case studies and ask questions about them. In an economy looking at recession, it was no wonder to see all this BPM initiatives in companies looking at ways to "Cut Costs".

As expected BPM was the entry point for IT projects where some of them ended up as SOA initiatives and black belts were the enablers for those BPM projects. Looking through my spyglass (plugin for my blog) I find many Q's popping out in the landscape. There was a general distrust of the six sigma methodologies and its efficiency among the participants.

One of the points that was raised in the seminar was, the black belts definitely bring in the horsepower to do the DMA part of the DMAIC six sigma process, however when it comes to the Improve and Control piece of the process they seem to falter. They face obstacles and road blocks all the way after the DMA cycle to implement their recommendations. When I asked the black belts about the buy in from IT groups on their recommendations, all of them unanimously mentioned IT as their biggest bottle neck. For that matter one Master Black Belt told me that in his organization some of the IT managers have expressly prohibited his team members attending the BPM meetings without his permission.

One other participant put forth an interesting observation, he said "American companies in the 90's have invested a lot on the BPM initiatives and while they have gained a lot of incremental improvements only some of them has got the biggest bang for the buck and it is so late now for them to change course on this.

So after this three weeks of SOA, BP, Six Sigma and Lean... I come out with more questions than answers. Common sense tells us there is no one size fits all, at the same time companies are implementing solutions based on these tool sets which they feel will solve all of their problems. The challenge ahead is how to improve efficiency of the existing processes and at the same time create an environment that fosters innovation (this is another whole topic for a later blog). Looking through my spyglass I found one place where there was something interesting. U.S Army has embarked upon a ambitious plan to transform its business process and they have taken best of two disciplines Lean Management and Six Sigma and have attempted to chart a new course. Check it out at http://www.army.mil/ArmyBTKC/focus/cpi/tools3.htm.

Looks like Lean can partner at where six sigma falters and make it a success. The process map and variance analysis that was rigorously done by the six sigma black belts can now be made to real processes that will bring the change by using Lean Management principles. I feel IT can be a great partner in doing this phase of the BPM initiative. By involving IT in a lean initiative we can create an environment in BPM Projects where, IT groups feels that they are an important enabler of the initiative rather than just a trench warriors executing everybody's wishes. The Improve and Control part of the DMAIC can now be done through a partnership with Business, IT and the Black Belts using Lean as the tool.