Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Forest and Trees

Interesting ongoing debate between strategic and tactical approaches to SOA. Are companies missing the strategic forest because of the lure of individual tactical trees?

For example, Julian Bajkowski (ComputerWorld Australia, 12 July 2004) reports the view of Dion Wiggins of Gartner, indicating that tactical projects won't achieve the strategic goal of interoperability.

In reply, Alice LaPlante (WebServices Pipeline, 12 July 2004) argues for the advantages of tactical projects. They help build the expertise and credibility. But the governance is lacking.

One of the key issues for web service governance is the balance between top-down/strategic and bottom-up/tactical. Experience tells us we need both. This is the challenge of Design Orientation - one of the six challenges we have identified for SOA.

The answer to these challenges, I believe, lies deeply within the latest work of thinkers like Christopher Alexander. At the CBDI forum, we have been exploring the implications of Alexander's work for SOA. See my article Business Driven SOA – Part 2 – Governance (June 2004).

See also What Does Top-Down Mean? (September 2011)

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