CBDI Web Services Roadmap - Guiding the Transition to Web Service and SOA

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Introduction

A Roadmap is typically used to plan a journey. The roadmap is a general purpose device that allows route planning where the start point is known, and there are potentially many alternative routes that could be taken to reach a known endpoint. Whilst we won't stretch the metaphor too far, the concept of Roadmap planning for IT systems has been widely used, as a device to coordinate many disparate activities which are often widely dispersed in terms of time, geography and accountability. Hence the Roadmap approach seems highly appropriate for Web Services introduction.

In this report we will consider the requirements of the typical enterprise. Many other types of organization such as ISV's, Systems Integrators, Intermediaries and Service Platform Providers may also benefit from a Roadmap, and the base enterprise model may be a useful context (as a supplier, consumer or intermediary) for planning.

In the CBDI Roadmap Report - A Web Services Maturity Model¹, we introduced the concept of Phases of Web Service related activity. We suggested that whilst there will always be exceptions, there is a mainstream adoption profile which follows a path of early learning; integration, reengineering and finally maturity. In this report we will reuse and build upon this basic phase structure, identifying the relevant policies, capabilities and tasks that may need to be put in place in each of the phases.

In Figure 1 we introduce the basic Roadmap model. The x axis repeats the phases discussed above. On the y axis we provide a structure for thinking about timing and interdependency which are simply clustering mechanisms, which specifically remove any organizational relevance. We refer to these as streams.

The basic Roadmap model has many potential uses. These might include:

• making strategic choices, for example identifying the states that an organization may plan to achieve during each Phase.


• guiding disparate activity across an organization, providing an organization independent model that many parties can easily subscribe to.


• communicating cross organizational activity in an organization independent manner

We have found that a high level view of this type can be very useful in sorting out the overall directions. So in this illustration we have charted an example enterprise that follows a fairly conventional path, which many will recognize. Early learning is undertaken in a deliberately uncoordinated manner, with the minimum of formality. The integration phase then requires certain matters to be managed in order to achieve sensible levels of consistency, which will hopefully reduce overall cost to the organization as well as establish common foundations for matters such as classification, core infrastructure services etc. The reengineering phase is then focused on creating enterprise level services and platforms, and maturity is all about convergence of the IT Services and the business products and processes.

Figure 1 - Example of Enterprise Roadmap Strategy
(Based on Phases from the WS Maturity Model¹)

We have based this particular model on a very common pattern which we might refer to as large distributed enterprise. The base model may form a good basis for developing variants, that would be suitable for alternative patterns such as integrated enterprise; virtual enterprise; Web Service is a product; and so on.

In this section and the remainder of this paper we focus on a more detailed guide to Roadmap activity. We provide a first level of decomposition of the streams, with topic areas and deliverables, together with rough indications of Phase applicability. We stress that this guide is intended as a starting point and or review input, in order to assist organizations to customize and manage their activities and plans.

References

1. A Web Services Maturity Model

Contents...

• Introduction
• The Basic Roadmap Model
• The Roadmap Framework
• Plan & Manage Stream
• Infrastructure Stream
• Architecture Stream
• Process Stream
• Projects