More and more companies today are turning toward dynamic solutions to replace existing legacy systems and frameworks. These solutions allow them to respond quickly to market demands and effectively meet ever-increasing business needs all the while reusing existing services and processes that exist within the enterprise. The most prominent solution in industry designed to address the needs of these companies is Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

This experience report supports the adoption of SOA using agile teams and looks at a real case-study where SOA was successfully deployed using agile methods. But before we go there, we should define a common understanding of the definition and approach to developing a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

* SOA is an architecture framework that loosely couples reusable business services to implement business processes as a composite of service applications.
* SOA solutions are designed to be flexible allowing business processes to change quickly and efficiently in reaction to the rapidly changing business needs.
* Current SOA processes and guidance encourage a phase-based approach to SOA implementation, fully understanding the problem and defining the solution before starting the implementation.

Of course it is this last bullet that we are here to confront in this report. We are convinced that agile development practices are equally, if not more successful in implementing SOA – and we have the experience to prove it. So while you may not be completely sold yet on agile methods internally, we hope to convince you of their merits when considering deploying an SOA.

Authors: Tom Stiehm, Robert Foster, Ron Hulen
Published: Digital Focus, August 2006