4.1.2: Executive Support
Obtain Executive Support Other Information:
Significant change initiatives require strong support from executive leadership. This typically only happens when there is
a compelling need to make the change and the senior management of the organization understands the need and drives the change.
Many federal agencies are already at this point. Executive management understands the need for greater responsiveness – as
delivered through increased agility – and is frustrated by the reliance on outdated, rigid software applications. SOA offers
the opportunity to incrementally reengineer the agency to achieve the desired flexibility. Change initiatives succeed when
organizational passions are re-channeled to achieve well articulated goals consistent with those passions. Our advice is to
downplay the SOA hype and buzzwords, and concentrate on the targeted business outcomes. Therefore, the task for senior management
is to carefully define and articulate the goals and establish associated progress metrics that the rest of the organization
can rally around. More importantly, senior management must sustain this level of support for the duration necessary to support
the change. The chief architect is responsible for demonstrating how to apply architectural best practices to achieve the
desired business outcomes. Having a service oriented Target Architecture enables the chief architect to define and articulate
individual business solutions that clearly address today’s business challenges and business goals, while also incrementally
enabling a strategic architectural vision. Critical Success Factors: • Understand today’s business challenges. • Conceive
a service-oriented Target Architecture Vision for the enterprise. • Effectively, but rapidly, model business objectives, processes,
and information that support the Target Architecture. • Architect and articulate solutions that solve today’s business challenges,
while at the same time advancing the Target Architecture vision. The use of a SOA Adoption Roadmap will allow informed investment
decision-making so that funding to support an enterprise architecture enhanced by SOA is allocated according to a logical
sequencing plan.
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