SOA Transformation: New Roles, New Processes for SOA
CIOs are also beginning to realize that SOA is not just a project with a start and an end date.
Calculate the Cultural Change
Approaching SOA as a change management challenge will help CIOs prepare for the cultural issues that invariably will arise in such fundamental areas as application and resource ownership. Neal Shaw, chief architect at H&R Block, admits that he "underestimated the amount of cultural change that would be required." For instance, one of Shawâ¬"s application teams built a service for a specific application. Other development teams decided to use the new service for their own projects but failed to inform the original builders. Consequently, when an update was made to the new service, the other applications that had incorporated it broke. Developers must now think about who "owns" which service and what updates might be forthcoming.
To create this shift in mind-set, Rick Sweeney, chief architect at health insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, encourages his staff to think differently about business user requests. For example, when a user asks for enrollment data, his staff doesnâ¬"t treat it as an information request and then think about how to craft an application to fulfill it; they consider it an "enrollment service" request, which prompts discussion about potentially reusable components. This change may seem purely semantic, but the new kind of thinking it generates is very important to SOA success.
Create IT-Business Relationship RolesOrganizing for SOA can also lead to changes in the structure of the IT staff. Thomas at Quintiles Transnational created a new position called business relationship manager. "I want these people to look at the entire business line and make sure that itâ¬"s consistent with what IT is doing with SOA. They are our single point of contact," says Thomas. When Quintiles works on an implementation with a process or service component that could have high value within or across business lines, the business relationship manager takes ownership of that implementation.
CIO and Senior VP Ken Yerves of JM Family Enterprises, an automotive holding company, agrees that staff realignment may be needed to adopt SOA successfully. He created a new position, client advocate, at the same time that his company was moving to SOA. About 20 client advocates staff four project management offices and are subject-matter experts for those specific business processes. With this expertise, they can identify potential process changes to improve the business environment, and are responsible for analyzing business and user technology needs, including how best to apply reusable service components. "The business tells me that these client advocates actually know how the business works better than they do," says Yerves.
