Recently, a collection of individuals (notorganizations), amongthem being industry luminaries such as Grady Booch, DavidChappell, Anne ThomasManes etc., came together to create a set of values andprinciples, to ensurethat the application of Service-oriented architecturescontinues to createbusiness value for organizations.
The context for this is describedhere http://www.soa-manifesto.org/aboutmanifesto.html byThomasErl.
We have seen too many projects that areunsuccessful because ofan emphasis on ‘doing SOA’ versus focusing on creatingvalue for thebusiness. How many times have we heard someone talk abouttheir ‘SOAstrategy’…when their focus should be on Service-oriented architecturesas ameans to an end – towards creating business value.
One can’t ‘buy’ Service-orientedarchitectures, much as onecan’t buy an architectural model... And nor isthe application ofService-oriented architectures synonymous with the blind adoptionof WS-* orREST for that matter…
Big-bang, top-down application of anyarchitectural model (orbusiness model for that matter) brings with it asignificant amount of risk... how do you build abig snowball? You startwith a small snow-ball and then work from there…
Most, if not all, of the work onthe core value statements andthe principle is aligned with the Microsoft RealWorld SOA strategy, asespoused in the press pass here.
Collectively, the group ofindividuals, strived to create a setof balancing value statements – forexample, business value over technicalstrategy i.e. while technical strategy isnecessary; if the technical strategyis unable to contribute to the creation ofbusiness value, then perhaps oneneeds to revisit the technical strategy. We canargue about what the manifestodoes not do - or about the nuances of what ittries to do – but if at aminimum, we are able to emphasize that business valuetrumps technicalstrategy; that evolutionary refinement trumps the pursuit ofinitialperfection; and that Service-oriented architectures are not realized bybuyingan appliance, or by checking off a box on a technology, or by buying aSKU thatsays ‘SOA’ in it – then IMHO this is a good thing. Your mileage mayvary, ofcourse.