Normally when the Ayn Rand references start flying, I head for cover. But since Phil Gilbert’s rant on the futility of foisting an SOA primer on naive business managers tracked back to my post on what BPM on SOA would look like, I guess I’m obligated to say something. Phil’s nominal beef is with the mere idea of a book called SOA for Dummies, which commits the sin (in his eyes) of equating SOA with web services and ESBs. The deeper issue, however, seems to be misappropriation by the SOA community of a value proposition that really belongs to something called Business Architecture, things like business-IT alignment, agility, reuse, etc. Business architecture, from his description of it, looks at business and IT together as an “organic” whole (with a slight top-down business-oriented perspective), rather than starting with IT infrastructure and then seeing what you can build on it.
So I guess he’s sort of agreeing with my post (I can’t tell), where I noted the inherent dissonance between BPM (top-down, business-driven) and SOA (bottom-up, IT infrastructure-driven). But he thinks that trying to explain technology to the business is a misguided approach:
As Frank Lloyd Wright said: “Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.” SOA is the form to the business function. And today, the closest thing we have to being able to define business function is called “BPM.”
So my problem with notions like “SOA for Dummies” is that, once again, we are spreading a technology-led message to less and less technical people, in an effort to help them “get it” when what we should be doing is spreading business-led messaging to more and more technical people so business understanding is shared.
I agree with the goal, but not with the tactic. IT architects already believe they are business-driven. They think their SOA initiative already is a proper response to business-driven concerns. If it’s not adequate — and I agree with Phil that it’s usually not — then the technology has to be demystified for those dummies in business if you want anything to change, because they’re the only ones who can change it.
In most cases, the strategic goal of the CIO is the same as the strategic goal of the line of business executive. What’s different are the priorities, the timelines, the degree of centralized control. Inserting another level of priesthood — the Business Architect — into the picture is not the answer. The problem with SOA already is too much “A” and not enough “S”. My approach would be to rearm the business with an understanding of what today’s technology can do. Empowering the business might make it possible, for instance, to build business solutions concurrently with the service-oriented infrastructure. Perhaps business people, not just architects, could have a voice in defining the scope and granularity of business services.
So I love the idea of SOA for Dummies. IDG, if you’re ever looking for a companion BPM for Dummies, give me a shout anytime.
Hi Bruce… yep, actually I agree with much of what you say… but you misunderstood one aspect of my post… I am _not_ advocating advocating any more A or S’s. We have enough of those. The heart of my post is that the business, top-down (from the CEO) has to take a much more active role on understanding where technology fits in their world strategically, as opposed to driving the change from the “service” on up. The business is the building, and SOA is the (technology) foundation. I don’t advocate a “BOA” layer… because that IS the business. How we drive those messages throughout the organization is more important than driving the SOA messages throughout the org, and in a world of scarce resources, messaging priorities have to be made.
Fair comment, Phil, and I agree with you on the goal. I guess the issue is who needs to be educated, business or IT. You’re saying IT needs to get the business religion. But they THINK they already have it. So I’m saying a better approach is to give
dummiesbusiness managers the tools to say, No that’s not exactly what we want.IT is fine when the business is left to creating “business requirements documents.” It’s when they start specifying implementation that IT gets nervous. But the business specifying IT implementation is in some sense a driving principle of BPM, so I say “Dummies, arise. In knowledge ye shall find power!”
Ha! OK… we’re almost in agreement. I agree with you that its everyone from the CEO on down who needs to re-think the situation in the context of the tools of today. In the post I not only say that technologists must be driven to understand how they fit within the business goals (which is something above the level of ‘business requirements’ for a given project; it needs to be communicated in the context of a balanced scorecrd or whatever measurement the CEO uses) but I also say that the correlary has to occur within the business. But the correlary of IT’s understanding of where they fit within the balanced scorecard (and how we/they impact it very day) isn’t ‘SOA for Dummies’… it’s coming to a strategic understanding of which levers afecting the corporate goals can most effectively be pulled using technology. Once understood, then architecting the technology can occur because now the architect understands the goal.
Of course, this is somewhat iterative (the “form and function” quote came to mind), but it’s not going to be achieved because a business person reads a simplistic 300 page tome about technology architecture…. any more than building the house of my dreams will be improved if I first read an Architecture 101 book (although a solution-oriented book, like a tour of Fallingwater might help).
That business people need to understand the strategic import of technology and the advances (and related empowerments) of the past 10-20 years is unassailable. I don’t think this is that book… and I don’t think that book has yet been written… Harvard Press, are you listening?
Smokin’ the Dummy…
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