As I'm blogging today, I'm sitting at the Zap Think and Linthicum Group, LLC, Practical SOA for Government in Tyson's Corner Virginia. The house was full, but the great thing about today was the number of questions and the resulting discussion around SOA, especially SOA for government. During my Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) and SOA presentation many of the attendees pointed out that the FEA was difficul As I’m blogging today, I’m sitting at the Zap Think and Linthicum Group, LLC, Practical SOA for Government in Tyson’s Corner Virginia. The house was full, but the great thing about today was the number of questions and the resulting discussion around SOA, especially SOA for government. During my Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) and SOA presentation many of the attendees pointed out that the FEA was difficult to figure out when considering SOA, perhaps too vague in terms of it’s mappings to SOA. I have to agree, but we did go through a few common patterns found in the FEA that relates to SOA. Like many things when considering the government and IT, the standards they leverage are far reaching and you need to learn how to fill in the spaces. Other areas of the presentation generated a lot of discussion as well, including how to develop a ROI model, as well as measure complexity of services. Also, how much do you iterate through a SOA methodology, or moving back and forth between the analysis around semantics, services, and processes. Good thoughts, great group of people for an eclectic group of companies and government organizations. Key takeaways for today: There is a lot of interest around SOA within the government; however there is still a layer of confusion, much like there is in the commercial world. The issues around SOA are more people, than technology related. The technology is easy to change, but the culture is not. ROI rules the day with both vendors and end user organizations. 20 cups of coffee makes you shake. Software Development