Where to Start with SOA: Criteria for Selecting SOA Projects

The concept of service oriented architectures has received considerable attention lately. Despite the hype our experience from five major German chemicals companies shows that firms do not blindly adopt the concept but want to see its value for their organizations. This paper identifies criteria for projects that should serve especially well as first proof of concept SOA implementations. Therefore the paper compares project goals to SOA benefits and requirements and deduces decision supporting criteria. Complex projects with many involved stakeholders and high risk of changing requirements, to name a few of the criteria, are more likely to profit from SOA than small simple projects with few involved people. The criteria are then applied in five cases to evaluate projects the authors analyzed. The application shows that the criteria give a good indication for or against SOA adoption in a project.