One of my favorite all-time quotations, which I believe was made by Mike Hammer sometime in the 1980s, goes as follows:
"Automate a mess; get an automated mess."
(By the way, that's Mike Hammer, the management consultant and author of "Re-engineering the Corporation" -- not the TV detective....)
That seven-word phrase just about sums up all the difficulties people have had over the years attempting to bring order and systematic processes to their tangled piles of spaghetti architecture. The constant lesson is this: if you don't get your management house in order, all the technology in the world isn't going to relieve your pain. This has been especially true for SOA.
That's why I like Shahid Shah's latest post here at the ebizQ community site, "If you can't repeat it, don't bother automating it." His title makes a great corollary to Mike Hammer's sage advice of years ago. "As a senior executive that may not be leading the project, but may be green lighting it, what you need to do before making a decision is have your project managers describe that they can clearly repeat (manually and consistently) what they are trying to automate."
The problem with SOA over the years -- and brought out into the light by Anne Thomas Manes earlier this year when she said "SOA is Dead" -- is that many companies expected the business technology approach to untangle messes created by organizational issues and politics. Remember, technology in and of itself only reflects corporate culture; it takes people -- using technology in a smart way -- to transform it.
"Automate a mess; get an automated mess."
(By the way, that's Mike Hammer, the management consultant and author of "Re-engineering the Corporation" -- not the TV detective....)
That seven-word phrase just about sums up all the difficulties people have had over the years attempting to bring order and systematic processes to their tangled piles of spaghetti architecture. The constant lesson is this: if you don't get your management house in order, all the technology in the world isn't going to relieve your pain. This has been especially true for SOA.
That's why I like Shahid Shah's latest post here at the ebizQ community site, "If you can't repeat it, don't bother automating it." His title makes a great corollary to Mike Hammer's sage advice of years ago. "As a senior executive that may not be leading the project, but may be green lighting it, what you need to do before making a decision is have your project managers describe that they can clearly repeat (manually and consistently) what they are trying to automate."
The problem with SOA over the years -- and brought out into the light by Anne Thomas Manes earlier this year when she said "SOA is Dead" -- is that many companies expected the business technology approach to untangle messes created by organizational issues and politics. Remember, technology in and of itself only reflects corporate culture; it takes people -- using technology in a smart way -- to transform it.
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