Datasheet

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Many organizations ignore corporate culture and behavior. SOA, how-
ever, demands attention be paid to incentives for appropriate behavior and
conformance to the architecture. Be creative, and be bold. Your current IT
architecture is a behavioral artifact. If you want to achieve SOA, you must
change behavior first and then architect forward.
ACHIEVE THE ‘‘RIGHT’’ SOA RESULTS
What are the right SOA results? They are the goals and objectives you iden-
tified in your SOA strategy. The right results are those that support your
business and mission objectives. Use metrics and SOA scorecards to track
SOA value and results. Demonstrate how SOA is helping your business con-
sumers achieve their goals, and also ensure you are improving IT delivery as
well. Caution though: Do not let your SOA be reduced to a reuse project or
get hijacked as a technology initiative. Explicitly align your SOA initiative
to support your business and mission objectives. Consider the following
suggestions to help you achieve the right SOA results:
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Consider establishing a SOA Value Hypothesis to test the value you can
achieve via a SOA in a number of controlled experiments. Do not bet
on a big bang model. Implement SOA incrementally based on your de-
sired end state.
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Work backward from your desired business end state and set clear, in-
termediate goals for your SOA projects and initiatives. Use a hypothe-
sis-based approach to test assumptions and expected SOA results.
Estimate expected value and benefits from controlled SOA implementa-
tions, and then adjust strategies and initiatives according to the results.
SOA GOVERNANCE IMPLICATIONS
SOA governance provides the key frameworks, principles, and poli-
cies for making appropriate decisions in an enterprise. In order to
achieve SOA success, SOA governance must transition from a body of
explicitly enforced policies to a fabric of culture, norms, and behav-
iors implicitly understood by the collective makeup of the organiza-
tion. The outcome of good SOA governance is appropriate SOA
behavior as defined by the SOA strategy and SOA governance model
goals.
30 THE SOA GOVERNANCE IMPERATIVE