This section contains major recommendations for the SOA protagonist regarding politics and tactics of SOA introduction.
Solid foundation. We identified four main pillars for success, namely securing a budget, selecting adequate pilot projects, building a team, and finding backers and buddies.
Establish processes, structures, and standards. In order to make sure that the SOA is not just a nice concept written on paper, processes, structures, and standards must be established. It is well known that there is a major difference between theory and practice. Even if employees or departments are fully supportive of the SOA idea, they might disregard its principles in their day-to-day routines for several reasons, such as a lack of resources to cope with the overhead caused by the SOA, a lack of support for the project, or simply the reluctance to familiarize oneself with the details. It is vital to make sure that the SOA principles are not just laid down on paper but are actually applied in daily practice.
Enforce substantial change. In some cases, new methodologies and technologies are introduced in an enterprise without any real change happening. Everything remains the same, except that new labels are used to describe what is done"Yes, of course, all the functionality developed in our application projects is now service-oriented." For an SOA to become effective and more than a void bubble, it must contain substance. Only if it has an impact on existing structures and processes, such as by transforming or extending them, will it yield benefits.
Ensure business involvement. Although SOAs are not primarily about technology, technology issues can become too dominant in the SOA introduction, especially if a dedicated platform is to be developed as a basis for the SOA. Ensuring business involvement is therefore crucial from the very beginning. Projects should be driven by business needs and should yield measurable business benefits.
Focus. It is important to have a clear focus when introducing an SOA and to concentrate on feasible achievement and reasonable time frames. This ensures early visibility of benefits and minimizes the risks of individual projects failing and thereby endangering the overall SOA introduction.
Evangelize. The SOA introductions should be permanently accompanied by evangelistic activities, such as coaching, training, education programs, and whitepapers.
Cope with open or concealed opposition. Inevitably, not everyone in the enterprise will be thrilled by the prospect of an SOA. Single employees or whole departments might openly or secretly oppose the introduction of an SOA. Reasons for such opposition can be manifold. They could be rooted in a general dread of change regardless of its concrete nature, or they could be related to a specific fear of losing influence and/or control. It is important to constantly watch for signs of open or concealed opposition and deal with it adequately. In this context, it is extremely important to precisely understand the motivation of the other stakeholders and provide offerings that are actually perceived positively. If the fear of coping with change is the greatest concern, coaching or training can mitigate the opposition. If the key problem is about losing influence, it could also be helpful to integrate people into the SOA processes and give them appropriate responsibility to contribute to the SOA success.
Compensate overhead. A particular aspect that is easily overlooked is the fact that applying an SOA will create an initial overhead. This overhead must be taken into account in the budget.
Ensure visibility. In order to firmly entrench the SOA in the enterprise, high visibility should be ensured, such as by involving all relevant actors in the processes and by implementing widely used functionality as services in the pilot projects.
