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Soa Maturity Exercise 1 BSM Solution
Soa Maturity Exercise 1 BSM Solution
Soa Maturity Exercise 1 BSM Solution
BSM had very high-level buy-in on SOA. Their CIO was a seasoned industry visionary and was
very able to understand the potential benefit of SOA to the company’s business and business
model. Their IT organization was also very clued up. Of course, they also failed to make it
happen. Why was that? All the ingredients seem to be in place! This case study shows how
important it is to have a good series of pilot projects that can show value.
Index
Blue Circle – required maturity
Red Circle – current maturity
Scorecard Explanation:
Business was certainly sold on the benefits of SOA, and was very clear about how it would help
them overcome their challenges in the market – commendations to the CIO who linked IT and
business strategy in a major way! However, there was hardly any communication with the
business side – marketing, sales, and finance – which could have all helped to drive
requirements. And of course, the SOA effort was completely decoupled from mainstream product
delivery.
The moral of this particular case study is that you have to make SOA adoption real! Do it one
project at a time but have a vision that clearly charts out how you are going to apply SOA to your
business and build your SOA architecture one project at a time. BSM should have really been
much tighter on the IT spend, and the governance committee, should have kept a tighter leash on
what their SOA $ were actually funding. Since no business value was every shown or delivered, it
was really doomed to failure.
BSM really did burn the ship when it got to their SOA adoption – they went all or nothing.
Although there is nothing wrong per se with this approach, it does leave you exposed. And when
you make mistakes, you have no other option but to revert back to the old way of doing things,
because the plug is usually pulled on you and the only way is down.
Long live the Big Bang! [NOTE: of course, what we mean is that the big bang only works properly
if you do most things right. Otherwise, it blows up in a puff and there is nothing left to show for it –
as in this case!]