Data Unbound

As I try to sort through the hype of SOA, I found the following articles useful reads over the holidays:

• CIO Blogs – Is SOA Another Fake Path to IT Agility? . Yes, designing reusable services is not an easy process. I think that people need to learn how be discriminating “consumers” of services before they can become savvy “producers” Often they are trying to skip that first stage of learning.
• CIO Blogs – The Starting Point for SOA . It seems to make sense that portals could be as a good starting point for SOA implementations. Portals are easy to understand. You can do SOA implementations in steps.

A very good overview piece on enterprise architecture is A New Blueprint For The Enterprise – Enterprise Architecture – CIO Magazine Mar 1,2005, an article on the connections among services and an event-driven model. I like the notion of an EA Zoning Board. The article is matched with a good piece on enterprise architects, who they are and do and what signs of good architects: WANTED: Enterprise Architects – – CIO Magazine Mar 1,2005

It’s good to hear someone say that you can EA without an overarching business strategy: EA Without The Strategy – – CIO Magazine Mar 1,2005.

EA On The Cheap – – CIO Magazine Mar 1,2005 points out how to do things on the cheap — the most basic steps:

Doing enterprise architecture on the cheap means you have to forgo much of the planning and governance and focus instead on services and reusable integration. That may still mean investing in some developers who know Web services and buying some middleware to provide the integration glue that Web services lacks, but the CFO will be able to hold onto those old mainframes while watching IT become more responsive and quicker to deliver new capabilities from them.

what architects look for in other architects

Some quotes from: Master Builders – – CIO Magazine Mar 1,2005, in response to the question “What to look for in an architect?”:

• “Businesspeople tend to be extroverts, whereas 75 percent of IT people are introverts. You have to be able to relate to both.”
• “They need to have a passion for tying things together; they should be constantly thinking about the big picture.”
• “I would look for excitement and passion. If I ask them about a project they’ve worked on, I want them to say, ‘Oh yeah, you should have seen what we did,’ and then talk for the next 20 minutes. He didn’t just do it; he lived it.”
• “You can’t just talk a good game; you have to deliver. I would ask someone to give an example of a strategic project they’ve led that brought together business and IT. Get them to focus on the key attributes that made that project work. Also, they need to be able to speak strategically and know the right level of detail needed.”