Welcome to the first SOA Advisor column, where I'll take a monthly look at the implications of Service-Oriented Architectures in the enterprise, in the development process and in the way IT organizations actually behave. As an observer of enterprise application and deployment strategies for more than 10 years, one thing remains common: It's very difficult to get people to change the way they think and work. The notion of herding cats comes to mind.
For example, there's the challenge of relating the concerns of far-flung operations teams to those defining services requirements and writing code. Another high hurdle: managing quality assurance across dispersed development teams that are often working for different contractors.
