Patterns provide concrete design guidance
Patterns may be developed as guidance for implementing individual services or as reference architectures to guide the design of an entire SOA-based solution. Training and mentoring are good, but the more that expertise is encoded into patterns and sample deliverables, the easier to learn and follow it becomes.
Patterns provide stronger guidance than design principles because they put the principles into practice in different contexts, showing more fully how they are to be applied and allowing many design decisions to be premade.
Available services must be organized to facilitate their use
Whether via a spreadsheet, a Web page, or a formal SOA registry-repository, services need some type of organization and cataloging that enables team members to use services when and where they should. In Forrester's conversations with clients, we find that firms' approaches are divided: Some take a library view of SOA services (a loosely organization collection of what projects have produced), while others take a portfolio view of SOA services (a planned, evolving, and coherent set of coordinated services).
A library view is a starting point that ensures the availability of broad knowledge of what is available, but it doesn't provide the process or organizational discipline to actually use the service library. A more strategic portfolio view provides a much stronger basis for designing services into projects, even before the project budget is set.
Getting the technology base ready provides the base for service design
When your organization buys a new piece of technology infrastructure, it tends to stay around a long time. Because the technology becomes embedded in your applications, it will be hard to get rid of. If each team is making its own decisions for SOA technology, the resulting diversity will greatly increase the difficulty of taking an enterprise approach to SOA.
When your COE has an advance plan for the evolution of your SOA technology base - including how your existing technologies fit into your SOA platform - it provides a solid base for the specification of patterns and the design of your services.
By addressing the more-important concerns of getting the design of your services right, these top five practices form a stronger foundation for the value of your SOA COE compared with simple training on SOA technology and standards. As your COE pursues these functions, it will by default build into these functions much of the necessary training on standards and products.
Randy Heffner is a Vice President at Forrester Research, serving Enterprise Architecture professionals. He is a leading expert on architectures and design approaches for building enterprise applications that are secure and resilient in the face of continuous business and technology change.
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