Service Oriented SOWs
Around the budgeting cycle at establshed clients, the three dreaded words "Statement of Work" loom around the corner. Why dreaded? Well, getting all the ducks in a row, tailoring the effort, resources, and cost to the ever-changing environment of the corporate world is always a big challenge. Interestingly, the basic principles of SOA can be readily applied to the preparation and publication of SOWs.
In fact, we have successfully done this at a client. In order to provide clarity around the work that we offer, the definition of services followed the same process as the definition of services in an enterprise system. Here is how it went. Before creating the SOW document, the following steps were to be followed:
- At the start of this style of SOW management, discrete service groups were identified for each external vendor
- At the start of the budget allocation, all the "service leads" needed to define the services offered by their teams.
- The consumers of the service needed to be clearly listed
- The service definition needed a clear definition of SLAs and escalation channels
- The triggering business processes (for example, "application review") for each service level needed to be identified
- The processes affected by the service were clearly identified
- OLAs (Operational Level Agreements) were defined for processes on which the service was dependent.
- The duration of the service, the turnaround time, etc. were documented
- The links to the services were added to the documentation of the invoking business process
- Finally, the services resources were estimated and the SOW was created.
There you have it. An organizational, operational application of SOA principles. Actually, is it not the other way around? SOA is a discipline/concept that grew out of business processes and business services. Sometimes we forget that the chicken came before the egg (or the other way around :-))
