Hi,

I've been doing some research around SOA maturity models. I've found it very useful to have a maturity model as a basis for planning a SOA effort. However, I didn't find anyone that fit my purpose perfect, but I have customized the maturity model that I found most useful. My personal opinion is that the maturity model from CBDI is the most useful one. The model from CBDI has 4 maturity levels and seven tracks: Management, Architecture, Operational Infrastructure, Service Lifecycle Infrastructure, Organization, Process, and Project.

I tend to agree with Todd's view in this discussion about maturity models, however I do find a value in defining maturity levels for Operational Infrastructure and Service Lifecycle Infrastructure in the way that CBDI has done in their model. Even though the use of a specific infrastructure does not gaurantee any maturity in other aspects like organization and processes, it does provide a good picture of how the infrastructure for IT-operations typically changes over time when a SOA is implemented. However, it is important to look at the complete picture when planning a SOA effort and all the tracks combined in a maturity model will give you a good hint of where an organization are in their SOA maturity.

Here is a list of some maturity models that I've looked into:

Successfully Planning for SOA, David Groves, BEA
http://dev2dev.bea.com/pub/a/2005/11/planning-for-soa.html

Successfully Planning for SOA: Building Your SOA Roadmap, David Groves, BEA
http://dev2dev.bea.com/pub/a/2005/12/soa-roadmap.html

A New Service-Oriented Architecture Maturity Model, Sonic, Systinet, AmberPoint, BearingPoint
http://www.sonicsoftware.com/solutions/soa_enterprise/service_oriented_architecture/soa_maturity_model/index.ssp

Increase flexibility with the Service Integration Maturity Model (SIMM), Ali Arsanjani, IBM
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-soa-simm/#N10056

Build your SOA, Part 2: SOA Maturity Model, Kunal Mittal, IBM
http://www.soaconsultant.com/pdfs/soa_maturity_part2.pdf

What to Look For in a SOA Maturity Model, Jason Bloomberg, Zap Think
http://www.zapthink.com/report.html?id=ZAPFLASH-20051031

The SOA Maturity Model, David Sprott, CBDi Forum
http://www.cbdiforum.com/secure/interact/2005-12/The_SOA_Maturity_Model.php

HP SOA Domain Model & HP SOA Maturity Model, Andrew Pugsley, HP
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/329753-0-0-225-121.html

What level is your SOA? David Linthicum
http://webservices.sys-con.com/read/47277.htm

10 governance tasks during SOA implementation, Jurgens Pieterse
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/eai/practices/archives/10-governance-tasks-during-soa-implementation-11940

Oracle Defines an SOA Maturity Model
http://internet.ziffdavis.com/oraclefz/article_soa_maturity_model.html

The Hartford Financial Services Group
http://www.infoworld.com/event/soa/docs/IE_1107_Moreland_Ben_Reality_Check.ppt

Unfortunately, many of the above maturity models is not public and what you find on the web is only a taste of the complete model. This pertains to:

BEA SOA Maturity Matrix
IBM Service Integration Maturity Model
HP SOA Maturity Model
CBDI Forum Maturity Model
Oracle

// Dennis


Todd Biske wrote:

Since Dave didn't include a link to my post that open the discussion, you can find it here:
http://www.biske.com/blog/?p=128
Since I'm more interested in debate than arguing over whose model is better, I'll call out (as I do in the blog) that Dave's model is advertised as an SOA Maturity Model. What I present is an SOA Adoption Maturity Model. There's a difference between the two. Dave's is arguably about the architecture itself, and what characteristics it has. The model that I've been working on is about adopting SOA, meaning it deals with multiple dimensions, much in the same way that a software development maturity model deals with how you do development, rather than what you develop.
-tb
On Feb 21, 2007, at 12:34 PM, Gervas Douglas wrote:

<<MomentumSI's Todd Biske took me to task yesterday with my posting,
okay reposting, of SOA Levels.
"While these levels may be an accurate portrayal of how many
organizations leverage technology over time, I don't see how they are
an indicator of maturity, because there&#65533;s nothing that deals with the
ability of the organization to leverage these things properly.
Furthermore, not all organizations may proceed through these levels in
the order presented by Dave."
Todd may have missed the point entirely in an effort to promote his
own views. Also, he may want to Google the larger paper(s) I wrote on
this topic, it's a bit more comprehensive, albeit old.
Todd seems to be CMMing SOA. Which is logical, in some respects, but I
want to make sure my work is not misrepresented.
Specially:
"The easiest one to call out is level 5: orchestration. Many
organizations that are trying to automate processes are leveraging
orchestration engines. They may not have a common directory yet, they
may have no need for content based routing, and they may not have a
service management platform. You could certainly argue that they
should have these things in place before leveraging orchestration, but
the fact is, there are many paths that lead to technology adoption,
and you can&#65533;t point to any particular path and say that is the only
'right' way."
Not really accurate.
Just so we are clear, I am indeed am saying that there is the notion
of maturity within "my levels." So, if you have an orchestration
layer, Level 5, than you should have all of the levels below it. For
instance:
"Finally, Level 5 SOAs are SOAs that leverage everything in Level
4 [and levels 3, 2, 1, and 0], adding the notion of orchestration."
This includes "content-based routing" and "service management."
Thus, there is a dependency on the more primitive levels which is
built into the model. Very much like the concepts Todd is putting
forth, but the approaches are a bit different.
Just thought I would clear that up.
There is actually a lot of confusion here, and Todd's post really
proves that out. Indeed, there are more SOA stacks than SOA solutions
out there now, all are different, and all are slicing-and-dicing the
SOA world in different ways.
At the end of the day I'm not sure we&#65533;re serving the end user
community as well as we should by promoting conflicting arguments. A
better approach may be patterns of success, which I'm working on now,
and I urge others to focus on these patterns versus creating new
stacks and models. The world has enough of them now. I'm putting my
stacks in the public domain, so have at it if you wish.>>
You can read this at:
<http://weblog.infoworld.com/realworldsoa/archives/2007/02/ battle_of_the_s.html?source=NLC-SOA&cgd=2007-02-22>
I don't know if David Linthicum is aware of this Group in case he
wishes to reply to any comments.....
Gervas
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