The new CIO immediately commissioned a review of the existing SOA infrastructure and an assessment of the maturity of service delivery. The assessment was executed in three primary phases as depicted in the following diagram:
In order to gather all the information in a structured way and to subsequently quantify the results in a meaningful fashion, the Oracle Maturity Model was employed. The model was used to quantify each capability domain using a tool created by the company (similar to the tool distributed along with the book). This allowed the CIO to obtain an accurate view of the "As-Is" situation and to develop and quantify a realistic "To-Be" model.
The CIO set aside a period of three weeks (one week per phase) for the execution of the assessment, the elaboration of recommendations and the resulting SOA Roadmap. As the timeframe was very aggressive, it was agreed that the organization should commission the consultancy services of a niche player with a background in SOA and SOA Governance.
The phases of the assessment consisted of the following:
- Evaluate the As-Is: This phase consisted of gathering current information from each capability domain and quantifying it as accurately as possible. The main deliverable of this phase was the assessment model populated with the As-Is data.
- Evaluate the To-Be: In this phase, a target maturity level was defined for each capability based upon realistic and viable assumptions. For example, a period of one year was assumed as the target period to achieve the desired maturity. It was considered that a longer period might prove too long in a rapidly evolving market and would result in W&B losing its competitive edge in the retail space.
- Elaborate the results: In this phase, the outcome of the maturity assessment was mapped to a SOA Roadmap by specifying how the gap between the As-Is and the To-Be could be addressed.