SOA Best Practices

Service Oriented Architecture is regarded as the key to improve efficiency of Information Technology. But in order to implement Service Oriented Architecture at a Business, one needs to have a lot more than just technical expertise. It is essential to hone skills in management practices. In this article, we will focus on the governance principles that have become widely regarded as the best practices in relation to Service Oriented Architecture.

Today’s competitive environment has seen Information Technology chains and Businesses merging at an increasing rate. Service Oriented Architecture and enterprise architecture are spoken of as independent from Information Technology implementations. With this drastic change in the Business environment, it is vital to seek out new ways to structure Businesses while retaining Information Technology integrity. The key to this is finding ways to define and develop such architectures as Service Oriented Architecture.

Motivation & Objections

Owing to the numerous issues and challenges that exist within the computing industry, the role of Information Technology has been significantly altered. In this era, Information Technology has to react in a fast and efficient way in order to enable Business transactions to occur in real time. Information Technology is forced to manage and design part of a complex, highly integrated enterprise wide architecture. What this means is the boundaries between Business side of an operation and Information Technology side is increasingly getting blurred.

Governance is meant to provide a structure that will support the Business objectives of customers on a number of levels, including strategy, functioning, and operations. Governance is meant to provide rules, metrics, processes, as well as organizational constructs that are necessary for effective planning, steering, decision making, and control of Service Oriented Architecture engagement as a means of achieving the Business needs of customers as well as their challenging targets. An effective Service Oriented Architecture governance model should define what is to be done, how to go about accomplishing it, as well as how it should be measured effectively.

Following are some of the most important questions that help in defining a good governance structure within Service Oriented Architecture engagements.

1. What are some of the advantages for the customer in such an engagement? What are the expectations and objectives of the customer?
2. What are the roles, procedures, structures, and responsibilities that are already in place at the customer’s site for Information Technology planning, decision making, and steering?
3. How can competency in leadership and skill be developed?
4. What are the guidelines and principles that are necessary for the optimization of the alignment of Information Technology and Business?
5. What is a good way for structuring Business and Information Technology so that the two will interact in a way that will maintain consistency while also keeping flexibility open enough to rapidly adapt to new changes that occur?
6. What level of service, description, and service definition standardization is appropriate?
7. How will services and service providers best be measured and controlled? Who should monitor, authorize, and define changes to services that currently exist?
8. How should the sourcing strategy of services be decided upon?
9. What are the current problems? How can the client be helped to solve them?

Based on our experience, it appears like a formalized and accepted governance model is really the key for the successful attainment of Business objectives. Thus, it is advisable to establish governance functions in Service Oriented Architecture engagements.

The governance model must simultaneously address the fundamental requirement of incremental adaptation, while focusing on utilizing the lessons that have been learned in every step as a means of defining and executing the next step. In order for the governance model to succeed, a new governance body must be created for the implementation and adaptation of the Service Oriented Architecture. In order to attain a fast and high rate of acceptance, it is advisable to utilize the client’s existing organization, working together with them to adapt it to Service Orientation Architecture engagement.

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