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17.4. Lessons Learned, Benefits, and PerspectivesProbably the most important lesson learned in the project was that putting a Service-Oriented Architecture in place requires not only a sound technical design but also a project management initiative that supports the technical architecture on the project level. The XML Tsardom that was established in the early phase of the project was a key management tool for coordinating the development of a large set of technical interfaces that spanned 23 different work streams. In effect, the concept of the XML Tsardom as deployed by Intelligent Finance adopted many of the concepts that we have outlined in our discussion on SOA as a driver for project management in Chapter 13. Another interesting observation is related to the evolution of the design of the central banking engine service: During the development phase of the project, priorities were very different than during the following maintenance and enhancement phase. The initially relatively tightly coupled architecture made a lot of sense during the development phase, providing the different frontend developers with an easy-to-use, ubiquitous interface. However, the same design became more problematic during the maintenance phase, which required a much more loose coupling. This led to the break-up of the initial service design into multiple independent services, which helped reduce dependencies and provide the maintenance and enhancement process with much higher agility. Finally, it is interesting to observe that about 90% of the functionality that exists today was developed in the first nine months of 2000. The focus today is on maintenance, third-party integration, and increasing system agility. The original technical and functional design provides an excellent foundation for these activities. The key architecture decisionin particular the decision for the Service-Oriented Architectureare still valid today and have provided Intelligent Finance with one of the most advanced IT architectures in the banking world. URLswww.if.com http://www.if.com/aboutus/media/keymilestones.asp http://www.if.com/aboutus/media/press2004.asp http://www.vision.com/clients/client_stories/if.html http://www.actiontech.com/library/Documents/GetDocs.cfm?ID=INTELLEXEC http://www.lynx-fs.com/cms_view/news_details_all.asp?article_ref=46 |
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