Once an IT professional gets his or her interest piqued in service-oriented architecture, the natural question is to ask, "All right, where do I start?"

The answer is at best uncomfortable – "It depends." It depends on what you've already got in place. It depends on how well your organization can absorb a paradigm shift. It depends on where your business opportunities lie.

You can spend a lot of time sorting through SOA maturity models, but you can run into square peg-round hole syndrome with those. The constant temptation is to seek out magic bullets, but remember the dictum that "SOA is something you do, not something you buy." Probably the soundest advice is to incorporate the principles of service orientation into your next project. Literally, do it.