Webinar: Implementing a Successful SOA Pilot Program

Service-oriented architecture is not easy to do right: IT teams must overcome technical, organizational, political and other hurdles on the path to SOA nirvana. Actional and key partners share their real-world experience to help you avoid the most common pains associated with implementing SOA for the first time.

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Implementing a Successful SOA Pilot

IT organizations are just now beginning to wrap their collective arms around the strategies and resources required for implementing a successful SOA pilot program. The topic of SOA implementation is particularly relevant as more and more organizations are starting to recognize the potential benefits of service-oriented architecture (SOA); with such benefits in mind, organizations are now becoming increasingly interested in moving from concept to reality -- from the mere "idea stage" to development of an actual SOA pilot program.

SOA Implementation Starts with Planning

Any successful SOA implementation starts with planning and identifying meaningful goals. Succeeding tutorials (see links below) will examine:

  • The identification of SOA-related goals and the gaining of consensus around them.
  • Key criteria to use in selecting appropriate projects for a SOA pilot. Making choices that are aligned with defined goals and the organization's unique characteristics will help accelerate delivery and reduce risk.
  • A case study of a successful SOA pilot program. There are an increasing number of these in the industry, and it's getting easier for organizations to make a business case for moving to SOA based on the success of others.
  • How to go migrate from the pilot stage to rolling out the SOA enterprise-wide

IT organizations must be aware that the development of a coherent SOA strategy -- prior to actually engaging in a SOA pilot -- is critically important to the ultimate success of the pilot. Neglecting the strategy phase tends to increase the risk of SOA pilot failure. And even if the SOA pilot goes forward, inadequate planning will increase the likelihood that SOA adoption will be restricted to legacy application silos -- instead of catching on enterprise-wide: across application, data and functional boundaries.

SOA Implementation, Planning -- and Business Realities

The strategy phase of SOA implementation creates a shared understanding of SOA among participants, providing the foundation for creating a plan or a roadmap; this phase typically lasts three to six months. But depending on the amount of work allocated to the strategy phase of the SOA implementation, longer durations could potentially increase risk by creating the impression within the broader organization that the SOA team is not capable of implementing a SOA solution within a "reasonable" time frame. Business realities, therefore -- politics -- come into play and therefore need to be balanced against the need to plan.

During this first phase of SOA implementation, education can help to facilitate a common understanding among organizational stakeholders about SOA benefits and capabilities. It's important to understand both the real-world capabilities of SOA tools and to know where they might fall short of expectations -- as well as to shed light on capabilities that may not have shown up on the radar screen during the initial investigation. IT can also facilitate SOA workshops to pull together the key stakeholders for the purpose of considering the specific needs of the enterprise -- and how a service oriented-architecture might address these needs.

SOA Implementation Roadmap

A central purpose of the SOA implementation workshop is to begin the process of drafting what will in the end become the roadmap for the SOA initiative. And any such roadmap ought to include a plan for a SOA pilot program. The SOA implementation roadmap is typically a two- to three-year plan for rolling out SOA enterprise-wide. The following tutorials examine the critical aspects of this SOA implementation roadmap -- from the planning stages, to the SOA pilot program, through enterprise-wide migration:

Moving to SOA is not a single project; it is a complex transformation that occurs over the course of many projects. Because this transformation is really about changing the way "IT gets done" in the enterprise. This transformation represents a very significant change -- one that affects everything, including: the inner workings of the development cycle, the way projects get funded, as well as the very development skills required to create useful services.

For More Information

Is implementing a successful SOA pilot your goal? Learn the secrets of successful SOA implementation, register to watch this free webinar, Implementing a Successful SOA Pilot