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December 05, 2007
Please don't hire a VP of SOA

This might sound like an odd title for a post, but I was prompted by this ZapThink ZapFlash, via the ever-watchful Todd Biske.

The ZapThink note starts off talking about the challenges in SOA adoption that come from organisational issues - specifically, challenges that arise from situations where tactical decisions continue to trump strategic decisions. All these are good points well made (FWIW, when trying to educate people about the importance of enterprise architecture, governance, BPM and SOA, we talk about the strategic importance of global vs local business optimisations).

However the note all goes wrong when it goes on to say:

Among the various approaches organizations take to overcome such obstacles, one technique is increasing dramatically in popularity: bringing on board a new executive responsible for the enterprise's SOA initiatives.

Really? I haven't seen that. If some organisations (maybe US based ones?) are doing this, I hope they're more focused on business transformation than on IT implementation - and that SOA isn't in their job title.

The note then goes on to suggest some ideal characteristics for such an executive:

The ideal candidate will first and foremost be a business process guru who also has broad experience in IT. Must have a background in architecture and ten-plus years in increasingly senior management roles. Must be able to communicate to both business and technical audiences. The successful candidate will be part team builder, part evangelist, and part bean counter.

Although it's slightly off the topic of this post, I wonder how many people fitting this description are out there? If SOA success relies on you hiring someone with all these capabilities, then I think we're going to see a hell of a lot of failures. This is where I get seriously worried though:

This position reports directly to the CIO with dotted line responsibility to the COO, and will be responsible for a seven-figure annual budget... job responsibilities include:

• Provide executive-level management leadership to all architecture efforts across the enterprise. The directors of Business Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Technical Architecture, Data Architecture, and Network Architecture will all be your direct reports.


• Drive all Business Process Management (BPM) initiatives enterprisewide. Coordinate with process specialists across all lines of business, and drive architectural approaches to business process.

Ummmm... so this role reports to the CIO, but drives all BPM efforts across the company? Even though the note says "even though the VP of SOA reports to the CIO, the role is primarily a business role" this is pure fantasy. Unless you're in a small-to-medium business it's just not practical to make this happen.

Think of a concrete example of a process transformation - something related to CRM. There's a wealth of salutory tales out there about the folly of driving CRM initiatives (which are process improvement/transformation initiatives) from within IT: CRM initiatives need to be owned and driven by the business. Extrapolating out to process improvement/transformation more broadly, even if transformation of some process areas isn't in the same league as that involved in CRM (and you'd have to argue hard to convince me of that) then I'd still argue that business leaders have to share ownership of process improvement and transformation initiatives. Real BPM cannot be driven by someone reporting to your average CIO - not even by a $200k-a-year uber-architect-cum-process-guru who's equally happy wearing patent leather shoes or pizza-stained trainers.

Of course there is a need to bring people together to push through significant IT and business transformations, such as those required to make the most of the promise of SOA and BPM initiatives. I would wholeheartedly back ZapThink and others in that. But in the real world - particularly in large organisations - people who drive these change programs aren't able to directly push everything, as ZapThink seems to be advocating: they have to be influencers and coordinators first and foremost. Think of an enterprise architect you know. If they're successful, chances are one of their key skills is in how they influence others' behaviour and get different stakeholders working together.

Even if you believe that one role can drive all this - especially from within the IT organisation - then your VP of SOA will be a transitory role. If your SOA initiative succeeds in its mission, then SOA becomes part of the furniture, and when that happens, roles like this one melt into the responsibilities of other, "business-as-usual" roles. If your SOA initiative doesn't succeed, then SOA is seen as yet another over-hyped industry silver bullet - and your $200k-plus hire is now seen as an expensive mistake.

Posted by neilwarddutton in Architecture • BPM • IT Governance |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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