The document discusses SOA (service-oriented architecture) for HR services delivery. It covers what SOA is, what it requires including organizational change and well-defined interfaces, and why SOA is adopted, namely for business agility. It also discusses SOA governance, an accumulative approach to SOA implementation, and an example SOA maturity model roadmap.

1. SOA for HR Services
Delivery
Chuck Allen, Consultant, HRInterop.org

2. Agenda
What is SOA?
What does SOA require?
Why SOA?
Business models / Technology
SOA Governance
Accumulative SOA
SOA Maturity Model

3. What is SOA?
SOA is architecture that
supports business agility.
Delivers business capabilities
via Services that are easy to
discover and connect.
Breaks monolithic applications
into service provider and
service consumer
components.
Designed for agility to “snap
together” components in
response to evolving needs and
business change.

4. What Does SOA Require?
SOA requires organizational/behavioral change.
Leadership and a well-conceived approach to
governance are necessary to support change.
SOA depends on loose-coupling enabled by well-
defined interfaces and service intermediaries
(e.g., Enterprise Service Bus).
Requires understanding of business process,
data, and objectives.
Requires analysis to identify and break down
business processes, sub-processes, activities,
tasks, and data and re-compose them into
services and service oriented bus applications.

5. Why SOA?
SOA often is justified on cost savings, but its lasting
value is in increased business agility:
SOA’s goal is to make business agility intrinsic to the
systems architecture.
Promises enterprises the ability to “snap together”
components in response to business change.
SOA also is a response to today’s highly distributed
business environment:
The concept of an "application" now extends beyond
an enterprise and beyond the scope of single
provider.
Demand for services anytime, anywhere, through
any device creates need for flexible, reusable
services.

6. Business, Technology Models
Business Model Technology Model
WS Operations, Services, Processes Rollup Into SOA implementation
Business Capabilities Disassemble into Processes, Activities, and Tasks
A category of Enterprise
enterprise capability Services
Function
supporting business Oriented
Supporting
goals. Architecture
Business Goals
A process is a
collection of sub-
processes or Business
activities that Business
Processes
support a business Process
(service-oriented
capability. aka Services
bus. applications)
Service-Oriented
Bus Applications.
A subprocess is
Business Potential
utilized by another
Sub-Processes / Web Services
process. An activity Reuse
Activities
is a component of a
process or sub-
process.
A task is a component Business
of an activity. A Web Service
Tasks /
procedure sets out Operations
Procedures
steps for accomplishing
tasks.

7. SOA Governance
Governance necessary to support change,
sustainability, and performance.
Run-time policies:
Quality of Service
Service Availability
Security
Dynamic composition of SOBAs
KPIs for the above
Design-time policies:
Reusability
Granularity of services
Requirements for the specification of service contracts
Standards for service documentation
Standards compliance

8. An “Accumulative” Approach to SOA
Not right for everyone, but likely a good approach for HRIT:
Establish a foundation. Do you have the talent? Do you have the
technology? Do your solution providers have the foundation?
Start small. Don’t “boil the ocean,” but have some vision for how
SOA efforts will scale.
Pick a discrete project that has financial justification on its own
whether or not you use SOA.
Focus on a relatively simple process (perhaps two or three
services).
Look out for a second project that reuses one or two of the
services from the first project.
Establish “governance” approaches and service registries early
in project to ensure consistency and reuse across the
enterprise.
Continue in a similar fashion to build your portfolio of services.

9. Example SOA Roadmap / Maturity Model
Advanced Process SO Mashups Agile Enterprise SOA Capabilities
Optimized SOA
Choreography • Light-weight, • SOA translates IT agility Become Enterprise
• New efficiencies fr. snap-together visual into business agility. Capabilities
automating interactions apps • Enables the • Bus, IT align on SOA
among independent • SOA used to enable “configurable enterprise” • SOA becomes part of
processes. new visibility into that thrives under change. the fabric of enterprise
processes. operations.
Begin achieving some aspect of “optimized” SOA in rollout. Realize richer optimization by year 3.
Year 2-3
Balance Reuse w/ Bus. Testing / Monitoring Iterate and Learn Accumulate/Accelerate
Line Needs • Test through-out dev • Schedule and learn • “Accumulative”
approach limits risk
Rollout
• Aim for reuse, but one • User Acceptance tests from retrospectives of
size may not fit all. • Monitor and hold Pilot Programs and vs. going too broad
• Compose SOBAs to against run-time gov each implementation. • Accelerate as
suit Bus. Line Needs framework capabilities grow
• Continue to develop
• Tune implementations bus and IT SOA talent.
“Accumulative” rollout starts in year 1
Capability Building
Web Services Metadata / Semantics Service/Process Models Pilot Project
Capabilities • What data models • Develop models for • Pick the right project
• Wrapping Legacy exist? initial opportunities. • Visible return / benefit
systems in WS • Canonical Message • Target/Plan first • Not trivial / not too
• WS for Integration development SOBAs to pilot complex
• Who is responsible? • Implement in production
Year 1
• Outside-in SOA
How maintained?
Bus. Case / Funding Team Building Assess Infrastructure Governance
Foundational
• Bus. Cases • Staff Assessment • Evaluate, Plan • Recruit Exec Leadership
• ROI Case • Role Definition • ID Mgnt/ Security Plan • Involve Bus. Unit
• Budget / Plan • Training / Mentoring • ESB/MOM/BPM Plan stakeholders
• Target Opportunities • Arch. Recruiting • Leverage existing? • Give leaders visibility
• Target Problems • Arch. Board Recruiting • Consolidate existing? into process/performance
• Leadership Recruitment • COE Establishment • Procure as necessary Design Time/Run Time