How do you get executives as excited about service oriented architecture as you are? Here's some advice I pulled together in a new article published in this month's Insurance Networking News:
Focus on the business benefit, not technical benefit: Business people don’t seek “SOA,” they seek cost-effective solutions to their problems. I
Focus on the solution without the technology: Look at a process that needs service-enabling and determine where the bottlenecks are, and how things would flow without technology.
Think long term: SOA, at least initially, costs money. Over the long run, as the SOA gets up and running and the stable of services grows, economies of scale kick in. But until then, there’s some up-front investments required that will be reflected in per-project costs.
Measure success: Key performance metrics, tied to specific areas of the business, will help calculate the return SOA is delivering in specific areas. Calculating return on investment need not be a complex undertaking. The key to measuring future SOA value delivered is to first establish a baseline of the company’s current costs and status. “Where am I today?”
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