The workflow project was launched in September, and will take a couple of years to complete. All together, there are 25 people working on these projects — 10 on the user interface and 15 on the workflow.

The Capstone project has done more than change the way that applications are integrated at OppenheimerFunds — its also affected the company's approach to the programming process itself. Before Capstone began, OppenheimerFunds used the traditional, "waterfall" model of software development. "SOA has driven us to Agile development," Youell said. "When you think of the granularity of services, agile takes the same approach. The business needs help you decompose the larger function into the smaller granularity of stories. SOA and Agile played off of each other for us, and helped make our SOA strategy much easier."

As a result of the switch to Agile development, the Capstone project plan changed as well. "We laid out a business strategy at the beginning which was a multi-year strategy, fitting with the waterfall plan," he said. "Now, with the Agile process, we're going to continue to burn with these teams until we don't get a return on value from them. We'll keep the development teams on these stories, and we can stop at any point where we don't think we're getting value from them."

Given the current backlog of these "stories," that will take at least a couple of years, he added.

The technology has led the development teams to think more about business value, Youell said, which was a significant philosophical shift.

The shift to developing discrete services rather than large software projects has brought in some excitement to the firm, he said. "This program has allowed to bring in these new technologies, created a new vibe." As a result, the technology team had to update its skill set, he said. And it's not about just learning new programming languages or development appoaches.

"I'm as guilty as anyone else of leading projects with technology, then finding business problems to solve with them," he said. "Because we led with the business strategy and we know our value proposition, I think it's help up very well with the senior executives."

The next step for the company is to look at policy enforcement, create a more robust security model and registry depositories, Youell said. "I think we're more informed about being able to make those decisions now," he added.

It's important to ensure that there's enough maturity in the model, he said, in documentation, and in being able to trace problems. "Or you could end up with a Wild West situation," he said. Decisions about governance will be made at the end of 2008 and during 2009, he said.