In a recent Webinar on the principles of developing flexible service-oriented architectures, Bob Knauss, a business integration solution specialist at IBM, recommended building as much visibility and transparency as possible into all systems that house components, so everyone will immediately “know what’s going on and get it all into a business context.” Click here to listen to the Webinar. http://www.ebizq.net/webinars/4965.html

Knauss explained that in his role at IBM, he has helped develop operating systems and managed SOA and ESB design projects, citing an example of having recently worked on a design project with Danske Bank, where IBM worked successfully to help automate their business processes and orchestration. Knauss said that Danske Bank is now expecting a productivity increase of 100 percent for the assembly of financial packages, “and that represents just the first business process implemented within their new infrastructure,” he said.

Advocating using a business context when designing systems, Knauss recommended that “when you sit down to do process modeling, the best way to start is with business people,” he said. One should first go to the business people involved, who will best know what they want. They will also be best able to measure success or failure based on the bottom line, he argued.

Knauss shared the following additional suggestions for ways to start your SOA design process:

• Reuse assets with meet-in-the-middle analysis. With business people, review current services. Ask yourself, how can I harvest service based on existing programs and functionalities?
• Design for SOA implementation with new code.
• Employ best practices.
• Start simple – chain components together.
• Build time into schedules to allow for elaboration and refinement. You can stand on the shoulders of others, so you should be able to have other programs stand on the shoulders you develop.
• Imagine that all transactions operate over the cellular network.
• Build visibility into all systems that house components – internal and external. Take the information you get and put it into a business context.

Click here to hear more suggestions from Bob Knauss for building a flexible and useful SOA. . http://www.ebizq.net/webinars/4965.html