SOA’s risks

Adopting a SOA platform is not risk-free, especially when performing pilot projects. Below is a non-comprehensive list of elements that, according to Reply’s experience, acquired over the years supporting its customers during this type of projects, must be given particular attention.

• SOA as a purely technological aspect: the greatest benefits deriving from the adoption of this paradigm come from the fact of reducing the distance between the business aspect and that of technology, concerning functions planning and development. The analysis and planning of business functionalities and the development of basic and advanced services must be done jointly by business analysts (who have a clear vision of the company’s core business) and the technical personnel.
• Service Granularity: functionalities must be developed with the greatest care, in order to ensure their correct reusability. Services which are too detailed will be of little use, because they will not offer the sufficient automation level; equally, services which are too generic will be useful only to a very restricted audience.
• Reuse Syndrome: when planning the services of a SOA platform, one must not think of reuse as the final scope of the service. Industry studies show that about 40% of services developed during the first SOA projects are usable, and this percentage reduces naturally and gradually at any new project.
• Starting with projects that are too big: the risk of failure increases when the objective of the SOA project includes many business processes which are highly complex or cross functional, since such projects involve many areas with different interlocutors and the number and  complexity of services to identify is high.
• Choice of the Pilot Project: to make sure that a SOA project is successful it is necessary to identify an area where there is a real business need, intended as the need to render the functionalities  - identified as services - agile and reusable.
• Do not underestimate time: during the development of a SOA project, it is important not to underestimate the initial service analysis and identification phases, since these will reflect on subsequent development phases and, mostly, on future projects and impact the perception that clients may have of the value.