10-step program to SOA success

By Dave Chappell, Special to ZDNet
Published on ZDNet News: August 23, 2006, 7:38 AM PT

Commentary--One of the best parts of my job is meeting with people to discuss their technology initiatives. In the past couple of years alone, I have traveled around the world several times and met with thousands of people at public SOA forums and in private gatherings.

This group consists of architects, developers, project leaders and CIOs--and they are at varying stages of adopting SOA, from just dipping their toes in the pool to full scale implementation.

The most rewarding thing for me is when I get a chance to engage in and facilitate a conversation with a room of people that includes those who have successfully completed SOA projects. Listening to these "pioneers" share their experiences, both positive and negative, with those still trying to figure out SOAs is an eye-opening experience.

Across all of these situations, and there have been many, I have noted a consistent set of themes which I have rolled up into what I will call the 10-step program to SOA success.

1) Who's Your Daddy?

Very few CEOs or CFOs give a damn about SOA, architectures, ESB's, or any of that. Find someone on the business side of the house who is responsible for a top business imperative, convince them the project will make money and let them champion your cause. Without this, the next nine points don't matter.

2) Have a Vision.
Be prepared to articulate your vision regularly and consistently. This seems like a "duh," but it's what helps you gain support from other teams, across departments, and from your upper management. You are putting an architecture in place that is going to prevail for decades to come.

3) Identify Attainable Projects.
Armed with your long term vision, choose an initial project that has immediate value--one that you can accomplish within a few months. Nothing speaks louder than a successful project delivered on time and on budget.

4) Support the Business.
Find the business initiatives that matter most and you will ensure that your SOA projects get the attention they deserve. These usually have to do with improving operational efficiency and/or increasing top-line revenue by attracting and retaining customers.

5) Flexibility Matters.
Create flexibility through loosely coupled services that can be put together to form composite applications that automate business functions. A flexible infrastructure, such as an ESB and Eclipse-based tools, provides business processes that are capable of adapting to change as quickly as market needs dictate.

6) Networking is not Just for Salespeople.
You have to establish corporate-wide support at all levels of the organization. Development teams, datacenters and business units will have to share data and business logic across processes that span traditional boundaries. This may seem like an unnatural act to some, but it's the only way to be successful.

7) Don't Lose Control.
Establish strict governance procedures from the outset. With stringent government regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, organizations need to be acutely aware and be held accountable for their book-keeping practices. In the software sense, this means monitoring, auditing, and reporting of daily business transactions. An out-of-control SOA may spell doom for the project and, much worse, it could cause damage to the company.

8) Don't Fear Change.
Organizational changes are imminent in order to address cross-cutting issues that arise. For instance, these issues may include new areas of ownership for business processes that span application silos and new governance models to enforce policies. SOA is a corporate wide initiative and you need to be a team player to make everyone successful at it.

9) Learn as You Go.
Nobody gets it right the first time. The first project or two provides tremendous insight into what works well, and what things can be improved. The successful aspects of each project should be recognized, captured and carried from one project to the next. These successful aspects may be software based or organizationally based.

10) The Best and the Brightest.
Finally, create an SOA Center of Excellence--a team that will be responsible for addressing the new organizational issues surrounding the adoption of SOA. This diverse group, including architects, project managers, business analysts and, most importantly, someone from the senior executive team, will ensure that the priorities of the SOA project are constantly moving forward and delivering measurable results.

biography
Dave Chappell is vice president and chief technology evangelist for Sonic products at Progress Software.