Rationalizing SOA for success
February 3, 2009 —
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In these uncertain economic times, IT budgets are tightening and service oriented architecture projects are at risk of flat lining. One of the keys to sustaining long-term SOA buy-in is implementing projects incrementally, ensuring success while minimizing organizational change—and generating revenue to boot.
Knowing how to successfully implement SOA requires an understanding of why some projects have failed. SOA has significant organizational change implications, and overly ambitious projects can be unsustainable due to high upfront costs and low initial return on investment.
"SOA is not just a technology change, it is something that needs to be dealt with like any other business change," said WSO2 CTO Paul Fremantle.
SOA challenges organizations and organizational funding models, he explained. "People in the organization feel threatened by change, and companies have taken on SOA without realizing there would be resistance."
Many organizations like to keep their silos clean and push cost and complexity onto other groups, said Miko Matsumura, deputy CTO at Software AG. "For every silo, there is a tribe with its own political interest to horde things."
One of the principles of SOA is software reuse, and organizations benefit through increased agility and cost savings when there is more sharing of resources, Matsumura said.
"The question is translating what enterprises want into the behavior of an organization and individuals," he said. "Tribes act in their own self interests, and the value of SOA can quickly fall way by the wayside."
Matsumura suggested that organizations connect behavior to motivational drivers such as job reviews, bonuses and other compensation. "Organizations should structure incentives programs and link them to best practices behavior," he said. "Without discipline, air goes out of the tires. When the kids fight, you've got to call dad. Executives should be engaged at a reasonably high level."
Specifically, C-level executives are needed to sustain the effort, Matsumura said, explaining that it is because those executives witness the cost of the bickering.
"There is a natural alliance between architects and executives: The architect sees the big picture, and the C-level pays for the big picture," he said. He added that executives also need to have a clear understanding of the implications of SOA.
Related Search Term(s): finances, professional development, SOA
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