Top 10 SOA Pitfalls: Wrap-up

Top 10 SOA Pitfalls: Wrap-up
Posted by Gero Vermaas around lunchtime: June 29th, 2008

The Top 10 SOA Pitfalls countdown hit #1 last week with Rik de Groot's post on "Ignoring culture when introducing SOA", time for a wrap-up.

Putting all pitfalls together in one simple 10 item list quickly reveals a grouping of types pitfalls. Number #1 and #2 are both related to organizational aspect. If the culture, mindset and attitude are not right, these are typically the pitfalls that a SOA endeavor may run in to. The next group covers the items #3 till #7, these are all related to architectural/design skills. And the last group, numbers #8 till #10, relates to implementation issues (although proper design could help to prevent these pitfalls from manifesting themselves).

The complete Top 10 SOA pitfalls list is:

Implementation pitfalls

Architectural/design pitfalls

Organizational pitfalls:

It was great fun to compile this list with the four of us and it also helped us to get a sharper view on why SOA projects or programs are challenging and hard to complete succesfully. Hopefully you've learned a thing or two and are able to prevent or at least recognize the pitfalls in your day-to-day work.

Thanks for having us,
Rik de Groot, Viktor Grgic, Vincent Partington, and Gero Vermaas

Filed under Architecture, SOA | 5 Comments »

5 Responses to “Top 10 SOA Pitfalls: Wrap-up”

Andreas Ebbert-Karroum » Blog Archive » Avoid SOA Pitfalls Says:

Posted at: June 29, 2008 at 2:44 pm

[...] de Groot, Viktor Grgic, Vincent Partington, and Gero Vermaas from Xebia posted the top 10 SOA Pitfalls for you to avoid the most common mistakes. They categorized these into implementation, [...]

mK Says:

Posted at: June 30, 2008 at 12:10 pm

Nice collection.

Here are some points that should be considered upfront :

Requirement/Business Understanding pitfalls:

#1 Restricted Vision – Unable to identify the overall picture which leads to “Incorrect business mappings ”

#2 Fail to identify and analyses the High level “Integration Points” (both internal as well as external)

#3 “Big-Bang”Approach/Plan rather than “Step Wise ” progressive one.

#5 Fail to identify and evaluate the “infrastructural” – Non functional needs.

#6 Last But Not the Least – Unable to identify and place the “right people” for “right tasks” in “right time”.

links for 2008-06-30 « Brent Sordyl’s Blog Says:

Posted at: June 30, 2008 at 4:32 pm

[...] Top 10 SOA Pitfalls * #10 – Not Invented Here Syndrome * #7 – Incorrect Granularity of Services * #6 – SOA does not solve complexity automatically * #5 – Big Design Upfront * #4 – Incorrectly applied Canonical Data Model (tags: soa architecture) [...]

Mary Says:

Posted at: July 2, 2008 at 12:17 am

Hi guy’s,
Thank for sharing your thoughts and experiences on this topic. I hope it helps….

Attended a SOA event two weeks ago. What struck me was the fact that every SOA project seems to step into the same pitfalls, in spite of all elaborate publications and earlier warnings.

Lessons learned:

- There’s still a gap between business and IT. IT people don’t talk enough with business people or don’t understand business well.
- Insufficient participation of users.
- Testing isn’t part of the daily routine, testers aren’t involved from the beginning.
- Too little POC’ s are being carried out.
- Using processes as starting point takes much more time than taken into account at the beginning of a project.
- Too ambitious projects (“big bang” with very compelling results) whereas taking small steps in iterations better suits SOA implementations.
- Managers too often manage projects using waterfall methods (fixed planning, separate phases, big upfront design, and no multifunctional teams). As a result there is little or no flexibility and less possibility to change.
- Technical support departments are involved too late

The whole story of this event @: http://www.approach-alliance.nl/index.php?option=com_jd-wp&Itemid=52 (ENG)
or
http://www.abc-thinkbig.com/weblog/#category1 (NL)

Looking forward to read more about your experiences/knowledge of SOA and necessesary cultural change!

Implementing Service Oriented Architecture: Organizing for Success | PodTech.net Says:

Posted at: July 2, 2008 at 11:11 pm

[...] will enable it to serve across the enterprise are all critical to success. There are many common implementation pitfalls, but Kahn explains how the process can be made simpler, and hopes to encourage more people to [...]