2. SOA maturity of your organization
The Business Domain
SOA adoption has an impact upon and provides benefits for both business and IT. In order to successfully adopt SOA across the enterprise, it’s imperative that both business and IT commit to the program. Both sides must recognize that there will be different ways of working, and both should recognize that there will be benefits realized for each.
As the adoption of SOA proceeds across the enterprise, the Business Domain must consider:
- Stakeholder commitment. There are many stakeholders across the business community who must commit to and participate in the move to SOA--from executive management and the managers of business units to partners, suppliers, and, in some
cases, even customers. - Synchronization of business and IT. Better alignment of business and IT strategy and operations is a key benefit of the adoption of SOA. To make this happen, changes to operating processes and structures will be required, decisions will have to be linked and measurements and goals will need to be aligned.
The People Domain
At the heart of the People Domain is simple communication. Looking at the other domains, it is clear that all our discoveries and decisions need to be communicated across the organization.
The Program Management Domain
While program management is certainly not unique to the adoption of SOA, it is a key ingredient of any SOA program. In the Program Management Domain an important element is the organizational span of the SOA rollout across teams, departments, business units, and the entire enterprise, as well as managing the depth of the service portfolio. SOA adoption requires an iterative approach, with SOA rolled out as a series of steps. Each step provides a complete business solution, and each step delivers measurable business value.
The Governance Domain
When talking to enterprises that have successfully adopted SOA, probably the single, most consistent message we hear is, ”of all the things we have done to adopt SOA, the area which most caught us by surprise was the need to significantly enhance our governance systems.” The Governance Domain concerns the models, systems and processes by which the enterprise’s operations are governed.
The Architecture Domain
The Architecture Domain covers the full architecture spectrum: enterprise architecture, solution architecture and technology architecture. The ”A” in SOA provides a strong reminder that the Architecture Domain lies at the heart of successful service-oriented architecture. Architecture is about principles, standards and models. We have repeatedly experienced, during many successful customer engagements, the tremendous value of adopting a set of guiding principles at the heart of the architecture.
The Operations and Management Domain
In the Operations and Management Domain, processes and policies defined in the governance model are applied. The domain covers all aspects of operating and managing our service-oriented architecture. In addition to stronger governance, the more flexible and dynamic SOA environment demands significantly stronger management. Management refers not only to managing technology, but to managing the technology in terms of services delivered by the technology, both IT services and business services. When a particular piece of hardware technology fails, or when a particular device is no longer available, we need to understand which services required that device to be there in the first place.
3. Are industry (vertical) standards being used either directly or, to provide guidance.
PESC
PESC is the Post Secondary Education Standards Council (http://www.pesc.org). Once the keepers of key EDI standards (like the T130), PESC now publishes a number of standards as XML schemas:
PESC also acts as a standards broker and is facilitating the convergence of Kuali Student service contracts with existing PESC standards. See Letter of Intent.
IMS
IMS IMS Global Learning Consortium
- LII Learning Tools Interoperability
- LIS Learning Infrastructure Services
- e-Portfolio
HR
Overview
Content Tools