SOA Success? Focus on Process and Architecture (3)

Challenge 3: Rethink Your Talent Pool

In addition to architecture staff that develop and manage the SOA’s big picture, the CIO will need a development staff that is comfortable with both business processes and the services approach to developing applications. And business experts who can partner with IT on process identification and implementation are also critical—the CIO’s organization can’t do it all.

“Retraining, hiring and redeploying are all needed,” says Rogers, so most CIOs will bring in some key hires experienced with SOA and retrain the existing staff in SOA-oriented thinking. “It’s an ongoing process, so start out small and do a lot of retraining,” says TrueCredit’s Metzger.

Challenge 4: Apply SOA Principles to Your Data Too

Often overlooked in initial SOA efforts is the importance of treating data—not just application functionality—as a service, says ZapThink’s Schmelzer. In an SOA, multiple services residing in multiple applications might combine to execute a business process. If each service uses different data sources, or even the same data source in different ways, the results might not be what you expect, he says.

For example, Metzger enforces strict separation between services that access and store data and those that act on the data, such as performing calculations. He also keeps presentation services—those that format the data for the user or for reports—separate from other services. This helps ensure that all services have the same context for a specific piece of data.