Thursday, April 10, 2008

Change is where the technology isn't

Over the past bunch of years I've seen a consistent thing about SOA "change" programmes, namely that they actually look at only two things.



The green bits on the slide, the technology and the IT architecture. Sometimes the architecture change is only aspirational and its a focus on the technology alone. The point is that the real change is in the purple and blue bits. This is where change actually matters. For an IT organisation to transform itself it needs to really change the purple element and shift away from a technology focus and towards a business focus. This change will have a greater impact on the success of the IT architecture and the technology than any change that is made lower down.

For a business to really capitalise on SOA it needs them to treat SOA like a successful ERP programme, namely to think of the business change needed to leverage the new solution.

If you are focusing on the green bits then all you are doing is an implementation project not a real change programme. Change means changing the way you work, not just the tools that you work with.


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2 comments:

DarioAMendez said...

Steve. I just read your book (free) "Enterprise SOA Adoption Strategies", I was the next question. How MDA can help the strategy to adopt "Enterprise SOA?

jeroen said...

Hello Steve

I'm a Belgian Student. For the moment i'm making a thesis about the subject SOA. Now I don't have a lot of experience with this subject. But I'm reading a lot about this topic! I still have a couple of questions.For example:

- How do you define SOA services for a company or what are the best practices?

I'm really interested in your experience with SOA. Because I understand the theory but I don't know how it works in practice...

So is it possible that I can contact you by e-mail to ask you some questions?

Best Regards

Jeroen Vandeleur