« How do You "Talk to Everyone"? | Main | links for 2007-04-27 »

Amr Elssamadisy has started a new series/discussion at InfoQ on SOA and Agile.  The initial article asks "SOA and Agile: Friends of Foes".  This is similar to a conversation we had here last summer.  Including the high quality comments.  Below are some excerpts.   I disagree with the last two clash bullets, especially the third.

Article Open:

"SOA aims at making the entire enterprise agile by using services as the building blocks for applications. Agile software development aims at making organizations agile by introducing practices that increase communication and feedback. Which is right? Which is better? Are we comparing apples and oranges? Can they be used together, and if so, how?"

On the Friends side:

"SOA and Agile share the same broad goals. They both recognize that change is an inevitability and that organizations need to effectively cope with that change. So we would expect that Agile is by default the methodology of choice when building SOAs and vice versa - right?"

On the Foes side:

"One of the main reasons is that they come at the problem from different roots and initially different directions. Agile is historically grass-roots and small-project based, although throughout the past years the community has gained experience and learned to adapt the principles of the Agile Manifesto to large projects. SOA is a newer initiative and is top-down in nature and takes a divide and conquer approach to software development. This approach, especially the 'divide' part, typically results in low-bandwidth communication between teams such as documents, specifications, etc... .

Specifically, here are three areas where SOA and Agile clash:

• SOA encourages that architecture be upfront while Agile has a derogative term for this approach coined BDUF.
• SOA encourages teams split along functional lines while Agile encourages cross-functional teams.
• SOA does not have a position with respect to feedback and change of the services once they are built while Agile is focused on frequent and feedback at both a technical and personal level."

I encourage you to read the article and the comments. 

Posted by brendamichelson in SOA • agile |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ebizq.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1732

Posted by: Scott Mark at April 24, 2007 03:47 PM | Permalink