Maturity is a somewhat amorphous subject to deal with across the various domains that use the term so freely.  There are the ‘classic’ maturity models for Development, Acquisition, Services and People from Carnegie Mellon’s SEI.  Then there’s Enterprise Architecture itself (though I still can’t quite understand why assessing how mature you are at EA is really all that useful for discussing with a sponsor), and now SOA.  There’s a risk that in adopting maturity for the sake of it which can end up putting you square back in a ‘feeding the beast’ position – something that’s been echoed in recent conversations from Forrester’s Gene Leganza and BCIT’s Leo de Sousa out on Twitter, but has been around as a theme for quite some time.

Anyhoo – here’s the release for OG:

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 24, 2009 – The Open Group, a vendor- and technology-neutral consortium focused on open standards and global interoperability within and between enterprises, today announced the availability of two new industry standards: the Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM) and SOA Governance Framework. OSIMM will provide an industry recognized maturity model for advancing the continuing adoption of SOA and Cloud Computing within and across businesses. The SOA Governance Framework is a free guide for organizations to apply proven governance standards that will accelerate service-oriented architecture success rates.

“These are two very different standards that are both important for the deployment of SOA within large organizations,” said Dr. Chris Harding, forum director for SOA and semantic interoperability at The Open Group. “Enterprises use OSIMM when considering adopting SOA, to help them determine what level of SOA is appropriate to their needs and capabilities. They use the SOA Governance Framework once they have adopted SOA, to help them determine how to organize themselves to use it to their best advantage. Together, the standards enable enterprises to accelerate SOA deployment and generate direct business value much sooner.”

OSIMM

As more organizations continue to embrace the use of services as the foundation for their next-generation IT infrastructures, it is increasingly important for them to assess their maturity within a complete SOA migration path and identify how to maximize business benefits from their adoptions. Many SOA maturity models exist today, however an industry-recognized adoption model and terminology based on open standards are both required for companies to realize the full potential of SOA. OSIMM leverages proven best practices within the industry, helping IT practitioners create a roadmap for their incremental adoption of SOA and Cloud Computing. Additionally, the model will help organizations achieve advanced levels of service integration that are specifically in line with their unique migration path and business goals.

“IBM is very pleased with today’s announcement of the Open Service Integration Maturity Model standard which provides our customers with the ability to identify business goals and assess associated usage of services when creating SOA solutions,” said Kerrie Holley, IBM fellow and worldwide chief technology officer of SOA Center of Excellence in Global Business Services. “OSIMM sets the foundation for an iterative, roadmap-based approach to deploying services aligned with organizational objectives. With standardization, customers are assured they can use these powerful concepts across diverse heterogeneous environments. IBM strongly supports OSIMM and its use in helping our customers as they execute on their services roadmap.”

“The principles of service-orientation are crucial to achieving Boundaryless Information Flow™,” said Ron Tolido, chief technology officer, Capgemini Continental Europe and Asia Pacific. “Therefore we are committed to creating standards such as the Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model that will help our clients to benefit more and more from SOA.”

“With our extensive experience helping clients in their efforts to achieve business value through service orientation, we understand that transforming an organization’s behavior requires maturity beyond the underlying technology,” says Scott A. Rosenberger, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “We support efforts like The Open Group’s OSIMM that can help organizations prepare to evolve to the type of Services Thinking necessary to achieve true value from services and the growing cloud movement.”

The first version of the OSIMM Technical Standard is available for download here: http://www.opengroup.org/bookstore/catalog/c092.htm.

SOA Governance Framework

Industry adoption of SOA validates the importance of good governance practices in assuring that organizations reach and surpass their intended goals. The SOA Governance Framework was developed by The Open Group SOA Work Group to ensure enterprises can benefit from proven best practices without having to invest in developing a framework of their own, thereby reducing the overall risk associated with SOA. Unlike other governance frameworks that are focused on IT rather than enterprise architecture or SOA, such as ValIT and COBIT (from ISACA), and ITIL, the new framework provides specific guidance for governance of SOA.

“The SOA Governance Framework will be a very valuable instrument for Capgemini to support our SOA engagements,” continued Tolido. “We believe SOA is a key enabler to achieve both cost-effective solutions and a high level of flexibility and openness. Working from proven and innovative best practices – captured in an open governance framework – will further accelerate our approach.”

“Organizations can reduce cost, minimize risk and accelerate the deployment of governance programs by applying the proven standards and best practices outlined in the SOA Governance Framework,” said Rajesh Radhakrishnan, vice president of Applications Services at EDS, an HP company. “As one of the key contributors to the SOA Governance Framework, we continue to collaborate with The Open Group to develop SOA standards that promote the adoption of leading-edge technologies and methods.”

“In today’s industry there is a broad consensus that without appropriate SOA governance, it is impossible to fully realize the benefits of the SOA approach,” said Rares Pateanu, vice-president, Architecture, CGI. “CGI welcomes the release of The Open Group SOA Governance Framework Technical Standard. We have contributed to the creation of this framework, because we believe that an open standard of governance will facilitate a common understanding, vocabulary and approach for optimizing governance in our engagements and maximizing the value of SOA for our clients.”

“The Open Group SOA Governance Framework standardization is a significant milestone for enterprises looking for faster, more reliable ways to exploit SOA for their business objectives,” said Karla Norsworthy, vice president of Software Standards, IBM. “It provides guidance and methods to oversee the planning, building and managing of SOA solutions. With this framework, customers will be able to leverage the knowledge and experience gained by IBM and our Open Group partners in thousands of successful SOA deployments and accelerate the time to value for their SOA projects.”

The SOA Governance Framework is available immediately, free of charge from The Open Group at http://www.opengroup.org/bookstore/catalog/c093.htm.

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One of the workshop sessions we put on as a group the other week in Munich was around ‘IT Governance’ in Higher Education.  John Townsend of Liverpool John Moore’s University facilitated the session by leading us through the current setup at LJMU and how well it’s working for them in managing investment and strategy across the University.

I’ve heard John speak through this before and he’s always rather self-deprecating about his involvement in how successful they have been in really getting to grips with Governance as a whole.   Their story is oneof adopting successful and proven approaches elsewhere in industry, without getting bogged down in intellectualising whether what’s good for everyone else is applicable in a ‘special case’, as can sometimes happen in HEIs.

One of the points that came up on numerous occasions was the general displeasure at people using the prefix of ‘IT’ in IT Governance.  In short, the prefix tends to reinforces the whole ‘us’ and ‘them’ standoff between ‘IT’ and ‘Business’ where IT either think or are expected to govern themselves and have some artificial interface with the business.  I guess it’s a bit like having a service counter approach at the stores where the business rocks up and asks for a can of tartan paint, to which the IT shop’s response is to head off in to the back to try and come up with the goods out of sight.

So what this means for well-established institutions with large and sometimes seemingly unwieldy governance structures is that a more desirable behaviour would be to develop a more mature approach to practical engagement with IT development at the core of business and quality improvement, rather than having the two approaches be distinct from one another.

Even if an organisation can manage to change itself to be more optimised in its governance, then there is still the more complex and multi-faceted people dimension which fills that structure. As a force, this could either be good or bad, depending upon the culture of the organisation and how people conduct themselves within that.  That said, waiting for a perfect governance structure to roll along is not likely to happen without a significant external shock to the system – say, for instance, through a major security issue arising or through an unexpected cut in funding.

Place your bets on which is likely to happen first…

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