For several years now, ZapThink has spoken about SOA Governance "in the
narrow" vs. SOA governance "in the broad." SOA governance in the narrow
refers to governance of the SOA initiative, and focuses primarily on the
Service lifecycle. When vendors try to sell you SOA governance gear, they're
typically talking about SOA governance in the narrow. SOA governance in the
broad, in contrast, refers to IT governance in the SOA context. In other
words, how will SOA help with IT governance (and by extension, corporate
governance) once your SOA initiative is up and running?
In both our Licensed ZapThink Architect Boot Camp as well as our newer SOA
and Cloud Governance Course, we also point out how governance typically
involves human communication-centric activities like architecture reviews,
human management, and people deciding to comply with policies. We point out
this hu... (more)
Ever since ZapThink published our Business Agility as an Emergent Property of
SOA ZapFlash, we've been explaining in our Licensed ZapThink Architect course
how SOA implementations must be complex systems in order to deliver on
emergent properties like business agility. Yet, even though we've expanded
our treatment of Complex Systems Engineering (CSE) in the latest version of
the course, the reaction of most of our students is typically one of
perplexity.
Not that we're really surprised, however. Breaking away from the Traditional
Systems Engineering (TSE) way of thinking is a hu... (more)
ZapThink recently conducted our Licensed ZapThink Architect Bootcamp course
for a branch of the United States Department of Defense (DoD). As it happens,
an increasing proportion of our US-based business is for the DoD, which is
perfectly logical, given the strategic nature Service-Oriented Architecture
(SOA) plays for the DoD. SOA is so strategic, in fact, that SOA underlies how
the DoD expects to achieve its mission in the 21st century -- namely,
defending US interests by presenting the most powerful military presence on
the globe. Furthermore, the story of how SOA became so st... (more)
It sounds so obvious when you get right down to it: you need to know what
problem you're solving before you can solve it. Common sense tells you to
start with the problem before you can find the solution to the problem. If
you start with a solution without knowing what the problem is, then there's
no telling if the solution you have will be the right one for the problems
you're facing.
Obvious, yes, but it never ceases to amaze us at ZapThink that when it comes
to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) projects, time and again we run into
technology teams who don't have a grasp as ... (more)
ZapThink revels in stirring up controversy almost as much as we enjoy
clarifying subtle concepts that give architects that rare "aha!" moment as
they finally discern the solution to a particularly knotty design problem.
Last month's Process Isomorphism ZapFlash, therefore, gave us a particular
thrill, because we received kudos from enterprise architects for streamlining
the connections between Business Process Management (BPM) and
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), while at the same time, several industry
pundits demurred, disagreeing with our premise that Services should
cor... (more)
Jason Bloomberg is Managing Partner and Senior Analyst at Enterprise Architecture advisory firm 
Darryl S. Brown
Eric Z. Maass
Jeff Barnes
Frank Greco
Peter Lubbers
Vineet Tyagi
Merlin Francis
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