As I recently threatened, SearchWebServices.com has now put together an SOA Lifecycle All-in-One Guide. We have done so with the hope that, by understanding the service lifecycle, IT professionals won't find service-oriented architecture such an arcane notion.
It is also designed to serve as a resource for those of you who do understand SOA and have one underway. As we all know, an SOA implementation can be an involved process and this All-in-One Guide will help you to organize your departmental and technical resources.
It starts with a chapter on SOA fundamentals. Service-orientation principles and a description of the SOA lifecycle are included along with planning resources and explanations of how to achieve and pitch ROI for SOA projects.
Next is a breakdown of modeling and design concerns. Model-driven design, business modeling, business process management and SOA governance best practices are discussed in this chapter.
On the heels of that comes service assembly. This chapter details integration, reuse, orchestration, agile development and resource allocation (e.g. virtualization and grid).
The next step in the SOA lifecycle is deployment. Inside this chapter are resources on testing, quality assurance, security and policy.
Finally, we reach the management portion of the SOA lifecycle. This is where SLAs, registry/repository, performance, change management and runtime governance dominate the landscape.
Governance and quality issues are stressed throughout the guide, as they are constants in the service lifecycle. The guide is designed to be a consistent point of reference. You can look ahead, check your progress or use the resources inside for colleagues who ask, "Just what in the heck are you talking about?" We've got it jam-packed with basics, best practices and how-to materials.
