The SOA Maturity Model

Introduction

Abbildung 1: SOAMM, from PRO07

Structure

• Prime Business Benefit 
• Scope 
• Critical Technology Success Factors 
• Critical People & Organizational Success Factors 
• Selected Relevant Standards 
• Key Goals 
• Key Practices 
  Although these characteristics allow to understand the model at a glance, they are coarse grained and are hence providing only a limited basis for a roadmap. 
  In the following maturity levels of a Service Oriented Architecture according to [PRO07] are explained: 
   
• Level 1 – Initial Services 
  Projects at level one are typically many small projects across the organization. They serve the purpose of technical skill building in a more or less laboratory environment. 
• Level 2 – Architected Services 
  At level two the architecture department has managed to implement SOA standards such as UDDI and WSDL which, according to [PRO07], ultimately results in cost reductions due to the use of standard infrastructure and components. From a neutral point of view it has to be challenged whether a true cost reduction occurs, taking into account the limited productive use of the SOA at this stage and the high initial costs. 
• Level 3a - Business Services and Level 3b - Collaborative Services 
  After having applied standards at level two, level three focuses on the linkage between business processes and digital SOA processes. It can be attained either by improving the internal business process and SOA alignment (3a) or by improving the alignment of SOA and collaborative processes with external partners (3b). Putting both ways (3a and 3b) into practice is of course also a way to attain level three. 
• Level 4 – Measured Business Services 
  Level four unambiguously reveals the derivation from CMMI because it is all about implementing measures in order to enhance manageability and controllability from reactive to real-time mode. 
• Level 5 – Optimized Business Services 
  Finally, at level five a SOA should be able to implement self-correcting business processes based on the metrics developed at level four. An example of such a self-correcting business process could be a dynamic pricing service determining the price of a product and substitutional products based on their individual availability. Thereby, the availability could be determined by either invoking the own stock service or by invoking a supplier’s service. 

Appraisal