The organization domain deals with the roles and responsibilities associated with the effort.  SOA adoption will challenge existing organizational structures and roles, sometimes being the most challenging aspect of the overall effort.

Level 0: Ad Hoc

At this level, the organization has not changed.  It has not given thought to the roles of service librarian or service manager.  It has not given thought to how services will be funded.  Put simply, it still operates in the same manner that it did prior to SOA and Web Services technologies ever being introduced.  There may be pockets of “grass roots” activity that are claiming SOA adoption, but a set of service-oriented applications does not yield a service-oriented architecture.

Level 1: Common Goals

At this level, the organization has identified key stakeholders for the effort, and those stakeholders have met and established a vision for SOA.  They are able to answer the question, “Why are we doing SOA and what does it mean to us?”  They have established goals and measurement criteria to assess the effort.  All of this should be based upon the objectives of the business.  Without this backing from above, an organization may remain in an ad hoc state for a significant amount of time.

Level 2: Foundation

At this level, the organization is likely to have embraced the notion of a competency center or center of excellence in order to keep the overall effort on track and manageable.  Key services are developed from within the centralized group.  This group is able to pilot activities ranging from business process analysis to service development technologies.  Other projects may outsource their service efforts to this team, or the centralized group may serve as a resource center, providing staff that has gone through the appropriate training on SOA.  In addition to development activities, this centralized group also ensures that the goals across all dimensions of the adoption effort are turned into actionable plans.  They are accountable to the stakeholders for the success of the overall effort.

Level 3: Method and Governance

At this level, the centralized effort should begin to decentralize, with individual teams and projects taking on service development and integration efforts on their own, under the watchful eye of the centralized group.   In other words, the centralized group has shifted from doing the work to governing the work.  Formal reviews of all projects involving services should be taking place, and the roles and responsibilities within the organization (service librarian, service manager, schema designer) should be established.  A process for establishing service ownership should be in place and working smoothly.

Level 4: Service-Oriented Enterprise

At this level, the development and integration of services is innate to the IT organization.  Conversations with the business about services, rather than applications, routinely exists, and the working relationship between IT and the business should be seamless and without walls.  The structure of IT organization has likely changed, with a clear distinction between service development areas and user facing (service consumer) development areas.

Level 5: Optimized

At this level, the once distinct roles of IT and the business will have blurred.  Technologies will have evolved to the point where the business users themselves have some control over the technology solutions that are leveraged in meeting the business goals.  Likewise, the technologists have a deeper understanding of, and likely more significant involvement in the business strategy.