There are a couple nuggets I want to call out. Regarding governance, I
don't think governance, per se, is the problem, but rather the process
by which we govern. As Rob described, the classic review and approve
model is typically not well received and has very questionable value.
That doesn't mean that governance is bad, just that technique is bad.
Financial governance of in-flight projects is certainly necessary but
you probably don't see too many good PMs complaining about it, because
it's not normally done through a review and approve model.
Second, regarding Nick's comment on the number of ways that SOA can be
messed up, I had a college professor who told us that there are many
ways to mess up, but very few ways to do well. Just because it is
difficult to do doesn't mean that we're trying to do the wrong thing.
Personally, I think there are two factors to consider. First, to Rob's
point, if the organization is struggling to get working solutions out
the door today, the deck is already stacked against them to be
successful on anything of a strategic nature, whether SOA or anything
else. Second, we IT practitioners are prone to putting the solution
before the problem. Generalities like "we need to improve IT and
business alignment" can be meaningless without concrete examples of
where the "misalignment" caused problems. Organizations adopting SOA
without clear definitions of the deficiencies that need to be
addressed and criteria for knowing when they've been successful are at
greater risk for viewing the whole effort (if you could even call it a
formal effort) as unsuccessful.
-tb
Todd Biske
http://www.biske.com/blog/
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 2, 2007, at 9:31 AM, "Nick Gall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 10/2/07, Peter Lacey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Rob Eamon wrote:
> >
> > Also contributing, IMO, is the over-emphasis on governance,
> > registries, management, et. al. These are important, to be
sure, but
> > the emphasis on them (which at times seems to be at the expense
of
> > creating a working solution in the first place) can be off-
putting.
> > Governance in particular will raise a red flag with any business
> > project manager. Who doesn't love having to go through a review
and
> > approval process, especially when said review can only have a
> > negative impact on the immediate project and almost always zero
> > positive value?
>
> Rob, you're my new hero. You've said in one paragraph what I've
been
> trying to sum up for over a year now.
Mine too! I especially love the line about: "I think [the set of IT
Industry Analysts generally] contributes to the demise with the
seemingly endless articles that have a general theme of 'you're
doing it wrong.'" I changed the line from ZapThink to all industry
analysts, because I think its endemic.
If SOA is easier to get wrong in twenty different ways than it is to
get right, then maybe the problem is with SOA -- not the people who
are trying to embrace it.
-- Nick
--
Nick Gall
Phone: +1.781.608.5871
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