While service-oriented architecture (SOA) continues to pick up steam in the marketplace, organizations still tend to focus on the technology required to operate a SOA rather than focusing on the enabling skills and behaviors that contribute to its success.
Current IT architectures are the cumulative result of past behaviors by the business and IT organizations. In other words, IT architecture is an artifact of patterns of behavior driven by corporate strategy and business goals. So, when we hear about the need for IT integration and the oh-so-tired "spaghetti" metaphor that describes IT architectures, think about how we got here. Think about the years of corporate decisions and budget cutbacks that have caused the current state of your IT architecture.
In order to resolve the pesky IT architecture issues we continue to face, we have to work backwards from the IT artifacts -- architecture, processes and systems -- to the behaviors that caused them. In other words, to achieve SOA and its many benefits, we must begin with the behaviors and culture that will lead to SOA success, and then implement the technology that will reinforce that SOA behavior.
