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Randy Heffner

Driving SOA In A Down Economy

by Randy Heffner

Forrester has a spent considerable time over the past six years digging into what it takes for organizations to achieve real value by building a strong program for service-oriented architecture (SOA). We have analyzed trends in SOA adoption, looked at how organizations can build a successful SOA platform, and defined SOA policy management. We’ve even published a starter kit for SOA. What have we concluded? Many get hung up on the technology and try to justify big investments in SOA itself, but the best strategies for moving to SOA are business-focused, portfolio-based, governed, and incremental.

All of that was before the economy plummeted.

So, how should your SOA approach change now that we’re in hard times? First off, if you have any lingering notions of making big investments, forget it. Big bang approaches to SOA are hard to justify at any time but near impossible to justify in hard times. The good news is that the SOA disciplines that are best in good times also help you sustain momentum for SOA in hard times. If you already have a strong approach to SOA, all you need to do is edge the dial toward short-term considerations. If not, hard times present a good opportunity to build the right approach.

To keep your SOA initiatives moving forward in hard times:

• Keep to your SOA strategy, but keep it lean. You still need a vision and strategy for SOA, but you have to dial it down. It is more important to focus on good SOA design and governance than it is to implement new SOA technologies. You won't always get the money to buy new products, yet with a focus on good SOA design, you can direct tactical investments in ways that can lead to future evolution rather than dead ends. Strong governance ensures that, even with a near-term focus in hard times, you can keep projects on the track of investing in the ongoing evolution of your service portfolio.
• Take street-level action. Even though you are still thinking about the long-term, bring your talking and action on SOA down to street-level, funded projects. Focus first on the projects that will benefit most from SOA and that will build your most important services. While unfunded future strategic initiatives may benefit from your advanced thought, in hard times they won't provide much credibility for moving today's SOA efforts forward. Develop and apply the specifics of your strategy in concert with solution projects.
• Prototype, pilot, refine, formalize, institutionalize. Hard times are not the time to plan big rollouts of anything in your SOA strategy. Instead, take a concept from your lean SOA strategy, find a project that needs it, and incrementally prototype and pilot it for the one project. Then look to apply lessons learned, refine your designs and approach, and iterate on the next project. When you've learned enough, then formalize it and institutionalize it for multiple future projects — but these steps may have to wait until times are better.
• Focus on governed evolution. All of this is about evolving — but evolving in a guided, intelligent way. Governance of your services, your service portfolio, and your SOA platform are the central control points that will allow you to make progress on SOA in hard times — even if it is less progress than you wanted — upon which you can build when times are better.
• Let people know what you're doing. It is possible to make these types of adjustments, achieve a strong approach to pursuing SOA in hard times, and have no one notice the good things you've done. So, develop a communication plan — for both formal and informal communications — to ensure that executives and peers know what you are doing — and NOT doing — to keep your organization on a strong architectural path, even in hard times.

A street-level strategy for SOA integrates short-term deliverables with governance toward long-term architectural objectives. It's the right way to pursue SOA in good times; and in hard times, it allows you to tilt the scale toward a shorter-term focus without abandoning long-term SOA goals.