System Dynamics Modeling for SOA Project Management

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has the potential to vastly improve IT´s efficiency. But to implement one at an organization, enterprises need more than just technical know-how: the leadership team has to be skilled in management as well. Especially, SOA implies different emphasis of project management. This paper describes in brief the use of system dynamics models for managing large scale SOA projects. System dynamics is a methodology for studying and managing complex feedback systems, such as one finds in business and other social systems. In fact it has been used to address practically every sort of feedback system including project management. In this paper, we will present a framework of managing SOA projects and show how system dynamics model can be used to enhance the effectiveness and agility of SOA project management. A general SOA project lifecycle is presented and two examples are used to illustrate the needs and effectiveness of adopting quantified simulation method such as system dynamics into large-scale SOA projects.