Services Oriented Architecture, or SOA, has become the de facto model for architecting modern systems. Part of the allure of SOA has been the promise of delivering strategic business transformation. However, for many businesses, getting beyond the hype and actually delivering on the SOA promise of a truly flexible IT architecture that increases business agility and produces a solid return on investment has proved challenging.

This article discusses the lack of common consensus around a definition of SOA and maintains that fundamental to any definition or understanding is that SOA spans both technology and business domains and SOA does not automatically equate to Web Services. The real challenge is that SOA represents a fundamental paradigm shift. Organisations, including business domains, need to have a complete understanding of end-to-end SOA in practice. SOA is not just about design and development - it is also about architecture and process.

Process Mentor, Object Consulting’s world-class software engineering methodology, is inherently aligned with/to the principles of SOA. The five key areas in Process Mentor that specifically assist in planning, delivering and managing SOA are highlighted.

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