Who Needs the SOA Competency Center in this world?

I can almost call it a trend as I see it happening again and again, case after the case. As soon as enterprises get active on SOA, apart from SOA technology platform and business service pilot concerns enterprises get their ideas bubbling around ‘SOA competency center’. It is an invariable expectation of having some sort of competency center that will give the enterprises whatever they want from SOA. Let me spend few paragraphs here to bring certain perspective to those who might be seriously attached to the competency center for SOA and might be seeking some direction.

To start with, first of all, I don’t believe that there is really something called SOA CoE or SOA Competency Center that can work in real-world. Well, hold on; I have not completed yet. J..if you understand SOA, you will realize that SOA is like a school of thought, it is like a religion or better yet, it is some sort of a methodology for IT solutioning. It is not a new domain in the enterprise architecture like applications, systems, integration etc. Point I’m trying to say it that if enterprises adopt the SOA, the architecture stack in terms of domains (applications, infrastructure, integration, data-stores etc) doesn’t change. What really will happen on the ground through SOA adoption is a metamorphosis of the existing EA stack domains to incorporate new methods and principles in what each of the domains does. Now, this is important to appreciate it because a typical competency center really is a powerful idea to create some sort of shared services structure in the IT organization to deliver a EA domain specific services. Now if SOA is not going to create a new domain in the EA reference stack, then what is this SOA competency center going to do? SOA will influence and result into some new way of doing things for all existing domains in the EA stack. For example, who application designing and solutioning is happening will see some change to adopt SOA. Similar how integration and data stored play a role, some changes will, happen there to adopt SOA. So in simple terms, all EA domains will be ‘SOA-fied’ (few much more while other less and some may not be for now) to collectively make the enterprise SOA enabled.

So here is how I think whole matter can be approached in more pragmatic manner with getting obsessed with the idea of competency center for SOA. To start with, I could like to differentiate a CoE from competency center or service delivery center as I would like to address it more appropriately. A center of excellence as name suggest is more focused on bringing excellence to few aspects of the domain for which CoE is being built. In general, it will be founded around establishment, management and governance of the core methods, standards and blueprints that are required for any specific domain/discipline to bring excellence. At the same time, service delivery center will be more focused around end-to-end services delivery using a shared services model. So with that definition, surely in the existing model of IT service delivery, SOA competency center or SOA service delivery center doesn’t make as much sense. But let me say this also. As strategic long term picture how I would envisage enterprises moving to, a Business Solution Delivery Center is more promising idea that is built on principles of SOA and has integrated competencies of business and IT. Which means, sometime in future, enterprises will have a common entity in the organization that drives the end-to-end business solution by integrating elemental shared services like applications, process integration, infrastructure, business etc. But for now, I’m leaving it as futuristic idea since most of the enterprises are years away from it. To make the approach easier, let us look at three stages where enterprises might have to think of SOA competency center:

1. Very early days of SOA adoption – this is when enterprise has just thought or heard of SOA and it is trying to find ground and explore the direction with it. Now at this stage all that is needed is to get better understanding of what SOA is all about, its relevance to what it promises to change in the organization and various technological options that it has to explore. At this stage, enterprises should create a focused team that is tasked with this exploration task that might involve collaboration with product vendor, external SOA consultant and other industry SOA forums. This team is largely part time allocated on to the SOA initiative, however might have one or two fulltime allocations to provide rigor and ownership.
2. Enterprise-wide SOA program being run for SOA adoption – this is when enterprise has done some due diligence around SOA strategy and is now ready to go on with the organizational change necessary to bring the enterprise at large to SOA-ready state. At this stage, different IT competency centers like CRM competency centers, SAP competency centers, BI competency centers etc . will need to be prepared to deliver their bits for making SOA work according to overall SOA reference model. On top of that, organizations need additional support to establish common directions and strategies for SOA and subsequently govern what each of the competency centers are doing. At this stage, there are two levels of effort required. At one level, enterprises need to continuously establish SOA capabilities. At another level, it needs to engage other competency centers to adopt and deliver the SOA results with overall governance. For this to achieve, all individual IT competency centers will have their small centers of excellence for SOA specific to their responsibilities of SOA delivery. At the same time, Enterprise Architecture group will have additional roles and competencies of SOA in order to drive the enterprise level SOA. So in this case, there is no separate SOA competency center is established. Instead, it is like a SOA adoption task force consisting of EA group, business groups and IT competency center representative that need to come into existence. It is more of a transient program structure as opposed to a fulltime independent service delivery center.
3. End-state of the enterprise with SOA – this is when all that was supposed to happen, has actually happened and enterprise is now running in SOA-enabled state. To large extent, focus and structure is not much different than previous case but there will not be any transient structure in this case. Since SOA is reasonably in the DNA of the enterprise, there will be very little governance structure needed while most of the responsibilities of SOA delivery will be taken care by IT competency centers for their respective role in overall SOA delivery.

With this, my take is that setting up a proper SOA program structure for first two stages is more important than actually setting up a dedicated service delivery center for SOA. However:

• It is essential to focus on the excellence part of the SOA delivery in terms of adherence of SOA standards, metrics of SOA success etc. through appropriate governance structure. It should be housed in the EA group.
• SOA brings in responsibility of designing the business solutions effectively using services methodology for which business analysts should be taking the ownership.
• A capable SOA infrastructure in the enterprise includes strong service orchestration, composition and delivery platform. This is typically housed in the Integration / ESB domain of the EA. I see this as a significant part of the SOA game plan. And hence to large extent, what I would liked to see in the SOA competency center should be taken up by the existing Integration Competency Center. That way, an Integration Competency Center that has been upgraded to provide all necessary SOA infrastructure for service orchestration, composition and delivery will be what I would see as a the SOA competency center. It will work very closely with the previous two core structures to deliver full SOA compliance Business- IT solutions.

To me it made perfect sense to approach in this manner. But again, I will be glad to hear the alternative perspectives.