Members only podcast: Jeanne Ross on SOA Adoption & Value Research Results
At
the September SOA
Consortium meeting in
Orlando, Jeanne Ross,
Director and Principal
Research Scientist MIT
Center for Information
Systems Research, shared
a preview of new
research on SOA Adoption
& Value.
The
research study, done in
collaboration with
Diamond Management and
Technology Consultants,
sought to help
individuals responsible
for architecture
understand how their
organizations stack up
on a variety of key SOA
metrics including
investment, re-use,
payback, and business
agility. Given the
vastness of SOA, the
research study focused
on how companies are
building and delivering
benefits from services.
Setting
some context, Jeanne
shared that the research
focus of the CISR is to
understand how
organizations get value
from information
technology. In 1995,
prompted by a business
challenge at Johnson
& Johnson, the CISR
began studying the role
of enterprise
architecture in
achieving IT value. The
CISR defines Enterprise
Architecture as a
strategic view of how a
company wants to
operate. Critical
elements of that
operating model are
deciding the degrees to
which the business will
standardize and
integrate.
As
the new SOA research
showed, these
operational decisions
and the corresponding
execution maturity
correlate with SOA
success. Organizations
that operate as business
silos – separate
business information,
processes and supporting
technology –have the
most difficult time
implementing SOA because
the company has yet to
learn how to stop
re-inventing the wheel
for every new
initiative.
Organizations at the
third stage of EA
maturity – working from
a standardized
technology base and
direction to share
business processes – are
well positioned for SOA
success. In these
organizations, the
business understands the
value achieved by
sharing information and
processes, not just for
economies of scale, but
also for customer
satisfaction and
business agility.
Jeanne
closed by describing key
management practices for
SOA success, including
the role of architects
in identifying re-use
opportunities, strong
software lifecycle
methodology, creating a
services roadmap, tools
for managing common
services, explicit
testing practices,
incentives for re-use, a
dedicated services
development team and
strong project
management.
Throughout
the presentation, Jeanne
engaged in conversation
with meeting attendees
on IT measurement
techniques, the
relationship between
organizational
demographics and
organizational maturity,
and a very interesting
finding on service
re-use, payback and
management investment.
About
the Speaker:
Jeanne
W. Ross is Principal
Research Scientist at
the MIT Center for
Information Systems
Research. Her research
focuses on the
management of the IT
unit, particularly on
the management of the IT
infrastructure and on
changes in management
demanded by new
technologies and new
organizational forms.
Much of her work
involves development of
case studies that
describe the human,
technology, and
IS-business relationship
resources of firms that
have successfully
implemented
technology-based
changes. Her current
research focuses on the
management of technology
infrastructures that
enable organizational
transformations and on
the discussion of IT
value between IT and
business management. Dr.
Ross has served on the
faculty at Worcester
Polytechnic Institute
and St. Norbert College.
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