I was inspired to jump back into this series after reading Beth Andres-Beck's blog post today. Thanks :-)
The "Silo Effect" Revisited
I had planned to dive into some additional thoughts to parallel Services and Centers of Excellence as it relates to SOA governance. But I thought it would be useful to drill down a bit more on the "Silo Effect" first.
To maximize benefits of SOA at enterprise-scale, it is important to consider how an existing organizational makeup (silos) can positively or negatively affect, impact, or support the defined objectives of the SOA program. Ineffectiveness will challenge an organization's ability to maximize benefits through SOA.
Let's not immediately jump to the topic of "reorgs" to reorient silos. Let's think about this SOA governance topic from a slightly different angle. And if this leads to thoughts of reorgs, alignment, or improved coordination across organizational units, then for our purposes here that's simply a result of a bigger idea and mission.
And another reason to not immediately jump to a topic of "reorgs" in this blog or in your mind right now...I'm simply a technical guy. :-)
Maximizing reuse and reducing duplication are among the general objectives of a SOA program. Typically this is viewed from a software functionality point of view. As illustrated in Figure 1, "Feature X", might represent currency conversion and collectively involve duplicate vendors (to source the conversion rates).
Not only is there duplication in terms of software and vendor-enabled capability, but there is duplication of human resources--or more specifically expertise related to "Feature X". Ahh, an organizational question. Jump back.
The third and final contribution to this series will consider each shared, common service as a "Center of Excellence" for functionality. Or given the elaboration here, maybe it's more appropriately considered a "Center of Expertise".
To maximize benefits of SOA at enterprise-scale, it is important to consider how an existing organizational makeup (silos) can positively or negatively affect, impact, or support the defined objectives of the SOA program. Ineffectiveness will challenge an organization's ability to maximize benefits through SOA.
Let's not immediately jump to the topic of "reorgs" to reorient silos. Let's think about this SOA governance topic from a slightly different angle. And if this leads to thoughts of reorgs, alignment, or improved coordination across organizational units, then for our purposes here that's simply a result of a bigger idea and mission.
And another reason to not immediately jump to a topic of "reorgs" in this blog or in your mind right now...I'm simply a technical guy. :-)
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| Figure 1: "Silo Effect" across Business & IT (click to enlarge) |
Not only is there duplication in terms of software and vendor-enabled capability, but there is duplication of human resources--or more specifically expertise related to "Feature X". Ahh, an organizational question. Jump back.
The third and final contribution to this series will consider each shared, common service as a "Center of Excellence" for functionality. Or given the elaboration here, maybe it's more appropriately considered a "Center of Expertise".
