SOA Hard Problems and
Spiral Solution
Development
Melvin
Greer began by defining
hard problems and
spirals. Hard problems
have three
characteristics. First,
a hard problem doesn’t
go away over time.
Second, left unresolved,
a hard problem will have
a significant negative
impact on your SOA
adoption. Third and most
important, resolving a
hard problem requires
multiple disciplines
that come from inside
and outside your own
organization. A spiral
is a technique that
breaks a hard problem
into a series of small
activities, each lasting
30-90 days. Each
activity, or spiral,
produces an answer that
moves the hard problem
towards resolution.
Lockheed
Martin has identified
SOA hard problems across
six categories:
business, engineering,
operations, security,
governance and skills
development. During his
talk, Melvin Greer
shared examples of hard
problems within each
category, as well as the
inter-relationships
between hard problems.
Within
the engineering
category, Melvin spoke
of altering existing
development processes
and methodologies for
SOA, designing for
context awareness, and
designing for runtime
discovery and
composition. In respect
to runtime discovery and
composition, Lockheed
Martin is trying to
determine the best way
for a running to
composition to become
aware of newly delivered
capability. As an
example, Mel called out
how the Mars Land Rover
continues to receive new
capability without
returning to earth.
In
closing, Melvin spoke of
impending challenges as
third-party services,
SaaS, Applications as a
Service (APAS), cloud
computing, etc., become
the new business models.
These changes will
require support for
service-level
agreements, real-time
monitoring, end-to-end
testing, pricing models
and service usability.
About the Speaker:
Melvin Greer is the
SOA chief architect for
Lockheed Martin.
In this position Mr.
Greer is responsible for
being a trusted advisor
to executives within the
U.S. Federal Government,
driving the expansion of
their enterprise
initiatives. Greer is a
“corporate thought
leader,” supporting
the advancement of
technology and business
processes, envisioning
the long-term
implications of
technology, suggesting
leading-edge
alternatives to ensure
state-of-the-art
solutions. He provides a
unique and insightful
point of view on the
business transformation
driven by advanced
technologies.
With
over 20 years of systems
engineering experience,
Mr. Greer functions as a
principal investigator
in advanced research
studies. He
significantly advances
the body of knowledge in
basic research and
critical, highly
advanced engineering and
scientific disciplines.
In
addition to his
professional and
investment roles, Greer
is a Certified
Enterprise Architect,
and a Fellow of the
Federal Enterprise
Architects Institute,
and member of
International Monetary
Fund / World Bank,
Bretton Woods Committee.
Greer is a frequent
speaker at conferences
and universities and is
an accomplished author.
“The Web Services and
Service Oriented
Architecture
Revolution” is his
most recently published
book.
Greer
received his Bachelor of
Science degree in
Computer Information
Systems and Technology
and his Master of
Science in Information
Systems from American
University, Wash. D.C.
He has also completed
the Executive Leadership
Program at Cornell
University, Johnson
Graduate School.
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