Without an architecture, there is no SOA. “Architecture identifies the key components of your business and how they interact with you, to give you the overall structure,” says Hong Zhang, chief architect at General Motors. With that architectural blueprint in place, both business and IT can identify, build, change and manage services that attend to the business’s big-picture needs, not just those of a specific project.

Businesses can’t improve unless they understand what they are doing and what they want to do. That requires understanding the business processes, which companies often don’t, instead acting on instinct or autopilot. The processes exist, but because no one knows them, no one can improve them or develop appropriate requirements for software, whether traditional or services-based.