On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 01:14, Anne Thomas Manes<[email protected]> wrote: > Please be aware that I have never advocated that we come up with a new > name to replace "SOA". My point is that we should never have attempted > to sell "SOA" to the business. It is a mistake to try to sell a vague, > abstract, IT architectural concept to business people.
Well, I think we are being terribly unfair to the swath of "business people" out there. I think this over-generalising of what constitutes "business people" is going a bit too far; some "business people" get SOA just fine, a lot not so much, and that's all ok. We can sell SOA to *some* "business people", and stay right clear of others. > It's like > trying to sell Web 2.0 to business people. *That* actually is a lot easier, as there are so many examples to point to and say, "yeah, they use Web 2.0", and they go, "yeah, we'd like something like that." :) Easy peasy. > That doesn't mean that > architects should stop doing SOA, just stop trying to "sell" it. As > Nike would say, "Just do it." I 100% agree with your sentiment, but I do see a problem in classifying our "customers" just as much as in classifying "SOA". It's a mindset, a strategy, an angle on technology utilisation, "agile" (brrrr!), and, dare I say it, a method (as opposed to methodology), and some "customers" will understand parts of this better than others. In other words, the world ain't black and white, not even on the business side of things. Yeah, a shocker. > If you have to sell something to business people, sell them the actual > "services" that will deliver value to them (i.e., their definition of > "service"). From an IT perspective, a service equates to a project. > "Doing SOA" means applying SO principles in the design and > implementation of that project. Well, *anything* can equate to a project. Even business people call parts of their infra-structure a project, whether it *is* one or not. "Project" is just a generic category for all things that needs a grouping vector around it, and to that extent it has little more than human semantic value. Pop some measurements and qualifier into those containers, and things will look up much quicker. Regards, Alex -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps ------------------------------------------ http://shelter.nu/blog/ --------
