Kurt Mackie, at ADTMag.com, was evidentially sitting in the audience during my talk at the Enterprise Architecture Summit held earlier this week in Palm Springs CA. He did a better job in summarizing my presentation than I could.

"Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an approach that has garnered lots of big ideas, plus there's technology complexity to boot. However, a best-practices talk by David Linthicum, a consultant with Linthicum Group, provided an outline for understanding SOA in a world where 'the hype is huge.' Linthicum recently spoke on the topic of 'Steps to Make Your SOA a Guaranteed Success' at Enterprise Architect Summit 2007."

"Linthicum said that the basic idea for SOA has been defined and now it's a matter of getting it to work. The buzzwords are new, but the issues are old. Namely, SOA is about people. In contrast, the technology issues are simple, he said."

And Kurt summarizes as my summary of "Good and Bad Practices."

"SOA is needed to improve an organization's adaptability and agility. Its benefits include functional reusability and supporting change management. It also affords interoperability instead of point-to-point integration, as well as overall orchestration, Linthicum said.

Bad SOA practices include selecting a technology before understanding an organization's requirements and needs. Another fault is not linking back to accepted enterprise architect best practices. Other SOA mistakes include not creating a business case, using the wrong people and a general lack of funding and empowerment.

So what are the best practices in implementing SOA? Linthicum listed a few:

• Make sure you do SOA right the first time.
• Don't be afraid to experiment. When a mistake happens, admit you're wrong and try again.
• Keep vendors working with you and empower those working for you.
• Learn all you can, but don't get caught up in the hype.
• Don't wait for standards to emerge. Standards have become marketing tools for some companies.
• Small battles win the war.
• Give yourself plenty of time -- never skimp on any of the steps. "

Have a great 3-day weekend.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on May 25, 2007 03:50 AM