Gleaning early value

As mentioned earlier in chapter 2, the first moves toward service orientation are likely to involve stepwise tactical exposure of legacy systems to glean early business value. Recall the approach described in our service-oriented process redesign pattern:

• Scope process redesigns, with measurable goals, in line with SOV7

• Redesign the processes focusing on using existing assets or external services

• Plan and implement incremental process improvements.

We begin by focusing on process redesigns likely to yield “quick wins” with minimal effort, pinpointing legacy functionality that can be offered as software services to the redesigned process. Our main focus in this chapter will be on business process models, as depicted in relation to the BA in figure 5.1. In early iterations it is unlikely that much time, if any, will be spent on the three underpinning activities of the pattern, aimed at achieving long-term business agility:

• Establish service policy in relation to business goals

• Understand domains and identify services and their dependencies

• Survey and catalog assets.

However as time progresses so these longer-term activities (described in chapter 6) will come increasingly into play.

In this chapter we shall provide a simple example of tactical first steps in moving toward service orientation based on incremental business process redesign given an existing legacy portfolio. We also consider the concept of SOV7 in more detail, and show how to apply it to achieve a better business process redesign.