SOA in Action Blog

There's been plenty of discussion about the dearth of skills needed to align the business and the IT department to move SOA forward, but what exactly goes into such jobs?

Mike Tavis recently posted some good job descriptions for the people in the organization -- at least at the architectural level -- that are driving SOA efforts, and what kinds of skills are required to master these jobs:

SOA Evangelist: Critical to the success of any SOA initiative. This person must understand SOA inside and out from the perspective of both IT and the business. Mike ran this category in its own separate post,post, so he clearly sees this as the most pivotal to SOA success. "Without an SOA Evangelist, companies will struggle for a number of reasons," he explains. "First, having an expert on SOA who spreads the knowledge throughout the organization is much more efficient than having various individuals coming up with their own definitions and perceptions of SOA. An evangelist can brand and market the vision of SOA for the entire company so everyone is talking the same language."

An SOA Evangelist should have strong leadership skills, strong technical or even architecture level skills, should be business savvy, have a grasp on core financial concepts, and be comfortable presenting to people at all levels, Mike adds.

Chief Architect: Requires strong technical skills, sound business knowledge, and great leadership skills. May also be the SOA Evangelist. Needs to understand the ins and outs of SOA,
and also "be able to explain the value of SOA to the business in business terms, to the CIO in high level technology and business terms, and to the technicians in detailed terms."

Enterprise Architect: Requires broad domain and business knowledge and works across organizational boundaries to ensure that the architecture meets both the business and IT requirements. Links the business mission, strategy, and processes of an organization to its IT strategy, and documents this using multiple architectural models or views. May be the same as chief architect in smaller organizations.

Domain Architect: Specializes in specific areas of technology, and are the experts of their domain. Domains requiring such specialization include application, information, security, infrastructure, business processes, network, and integration. Domains may be combined in smaller companies.