Service Oriented Architecture Field Guide for Executives

2.8. FROM OBJECT TO SERVICE ORIENTATION

For the technical executives, the parallel between service orientation and object orientation is unmistakable. Principles such as abstraction and generalization already exist in the real world. When IT begins to model software artifacts that follow these principles, it becomes object oriented.

IT does not make a business object or service oriented. Instead, it orients its own practices for modeling and developing software by adopting the principles of the real world.

Object oriented analysis and design (OOAD) had tremendous impact on IT. Business problems were captured as use cases. They were then analyzed to define classes, such as Customer and Order. The approach allowed IT to grapple with complex problems. A software application developed using this approach is generally easier to understand and maintain.

As successful as OOAD was, its scope was limited to individual software applications. Objects were the building blocks of a single application. Unfortunately, a business rarely does anything using just one software application, or using just software, for that matter.

So, we needed a new software development methodology that looked at the bigger picture of the products of a business and how it goes about producing them. That means, within the boundary of the business it needed to consider all available resources—personnel, machines, and software—as contributors to production. Outside the boundary of the business it needed to look at ...