Dan Foody took me to task as a "flip flopper" in his recent post. "It's only two months ago that Dave Linthicum gave me a lot of flack when I criticized his statement to (and I quote) 'resist the temptation to redirect resources toward tactical business needs.' However, recently Dave changed his tune when he said, "the best approach is to focus on short term objectives that are directly related to the generation Dan Foody took me to task as a “flip flopper” in his recent post. “It’s only two months ago that Dave Linthicum gave me a lot of flack when I criticized his statement to (and I quote) ‘resist the temptation to redirect resources toward tactical business needs.’ However, recently Dave changed his tune when he said, “the best approach is to focus on short term objectives that are directly related to the generation of revenue.’ Dave, it’s good to see you’re listening… even though it took a while :-)” No Dan, I’m not agreeing with you. As I’ve always stated you need to prove the value of the strategy with short term wins, however the objective is always to support the long term strategy. I think I’ve written about that enough times not to have to say it again. When people take me out of context like this I know how the presidential candidates feel. Here is the complete quote: “SOA always needs to prove its value and during times of economic uncertainly, where capital budgets are contracting, the best approach is to focus on short term objectives that are directly related to the generation or revenue. This does not replace a long term SOA strategy, which is very important, it’s just a way to provide leadership with proof points to justify the continued investment. Perhaps the service enablement of the existing legacy systems to provide better interfaces for trading partners or the ability to abstract processes/services into configurable domains, thus allowing processes to change without a great deal of latency and cost.” The issue I had was that many view SOA as a project, or a set of disconnected projects. It’s really more of a Journey. The issue is that many are not considering the longer term strategy around SOA, and instead focusing on tactical activities with no common understanding of the desired end state. That’s the issue I had with Dan’s comment, and I stand by that. My point above is that you also may need to prove value of any long term strategies with many small wins to demonstrate value. “While commenting more on Dave’s flip-flopping would be rubbing salt in the wound, I think the advice I gave in the series of responses (1, 2, 3, 4) to Dave’s original post are still appropriate as we enter the upcoming recession.” I don’t think there will be a recession, by the way. You can quote me on that. 🙂 Software Development