Chronicles of Technology

Some of the questions that I left unanswered and subject to more thinking...

This makes me think the following questions...

- Will enterprises be able to sustain themselves and their projects, until they are able to reach critical mass and realize some benefits?
- Will they drop the ball on these initiatives the same ways they have done so before due to lack of funds and the promised ROI that needs to come sooner than later?
- How can we make people, (not just the key members) aware of SOA and how does it relate to their perspectives, pain factors and resuting benefits. Training not just at the key levels but to really have an impact the ownership of the initiative must rest with every person in the organization that will touch it.

I shall leave some of my answers and thoughts pending for my next post so that I can digest them some more before I belt them out.

These questions lead me to a formalize things in the form of a cyclic system. But to explain that lets see if we can put forth single statement answers to each of the questions and then use those statements for further discussion.

- Will enterprises be able to sustain themselves and their projects, until they are able to reach critical mass and realize some benefits?

Only if they set short term, achievable goals, set "expectations" with all affected parties (the 'stake' holders) and more importantly give the stakeholders "visibility" into how they are an "essential" part of the "initiative", and not just the benefactors.

- Will they drop the ball on these initiatives the same ways they have done so before due to lack of funds and the promised ROI that needs to come sooner than later?

If they dont expect Mary Poppins and Peter Pan!

Any 'system' undergoes 'transient' and 'steady' states. A 'transient' state is induced into the system by providing a stimulus. The time that a system takes to go from 'transient' state to a 'steady' state can be highly variable and is a function of the system properties in itself.

What does that mean?

The introduction of these new ideas, methodologies and technologies into an enterprise introduces a lot of 'direct' and 'resultant' transients. To achieve the desired steady state these transients have to be 'calibrated' and chosen properly before introduction.

This thought process needs be applied to all facets (people, process, business vision, technology) and at all levels for each of these facets, whether its an IT system, a people system (a team working on a certain initiative) or a business system.

- How can we make people, (not just the key members) aware of SOA and how does it relate to their perspectives, pain factors and resuting benefits that they should expect.

Training not just at the key levels but to really have an impact the ownership of the initiative must rest with every person in the organization that will touch it.

I believe I answered this question briefly. To add more detail, I would say that the awareness and the ownership "for" the big picture needs to rest with every entity in the system.

You can let people be 'black boxed' in terms of deliverables and contributions to the initiative but they should 'never' be 'black boxed' in terms of vision and design of the holistic view.

Abstraction is good, very necessary, but not in the complete lack of the 'overall vision'.

They cyclic system would be as follows....... (pending again.. I think this will need some time, thought and a visio diagram... not as easy as random ramblings that come out extempore)

I am not sure if I had the 'confidence' or the 'plain guts' to say that 'key people' would experience career impacts due to their hindsight on SOA. That was a generic statement, based on the organizational implications that I see coming to light due to lack of vision in several areas in the 'Enterprise'.

But, I can now "agree" on a very specific statement by Jeff Schnieder.


CIO's Aren't Taking SOA Serious

The fact of the matter is... it is BIG. It has never been this big. This is one big opportunity after the "dot-com bubble burst" to make holistic enterprise dreams a reality.

As Jeff mentions, Most people are looking at a bunch of 50-100 trees as a forest. The forest is much larger, and at the same time it is part of an even bigger picture, that of a "Jungle".

One can apply the Hitch Hikers Guide analogy to this situation as well.

Bottom line. Don't look at SOA, as an easy answer to all existing problems. In actuality, it in involves additional pain in delivering something that must comply to a new set of rules and benchmarks to allow for extensibility in the SOA. This shall be a much more tasking effort than an ERP, Y2K and Web implementation.

This makes me think the following questions...
- Will enterprises be able to sustain themselves and their projects, until they are able to reach critical mass and realize some benefits?
- Will they drop the ball on these initiatives the same ways they have done so before due to lack of funds and the promised ROI that needs to come sooner than later?
- How can we make people, (not just the key members) aware of SOA and how does it relate to their perspectives, pain factors and resuting benefits. Training not just at the key levels but to really have an impact the ownership of the initiative must rest with every person in the organization that will touch it.

I shall leave some of my answers and thoughts pending for my next post so that I can digest them some more before I belt them out.