An in-depth interview with an SOA pioneer at Deutsche Bank who “kicked-off an expansive yet Agile methodology that is quickly moving the bank to a global service-orientation, with a minimum of fuss and pain.” From the Interview:

“At the end of the first quarter, we did something that’s not too common for Deutsche Bank, which is, we created some cross-bank governance structures for our SOA program. Most people will hear the word ‘governance’ and tune out. But this was a group making sure that a group of people across the bank were able to pick up the early work of the infrastructure, and expend that to training and communications for the flagship project to the service development. What we didn’t want to do is just turn all the activity onto SOA and create spaghetti; to let 1,000 flowers bloom into something that, in the end, doesn’t really add up to much. What the governance structures did was to build on the work we did on the infrastructure side, and advance it when it comes to things like naming standards. All of the engineering decisions that have to be made-which can make all the difference in how these things are used and operate. To extend that to communications, we had the same governance structure set up. We rolled these programs out to touch the development community in small groups. We made sure they were aware of what was going on, that we listened to the problems that were affecting them, and that we would determine what would make a difference for them.”

Link to Resource: John Stepper Brings SOA to Deutsche Bank

Source: John Stepper, Managing IT Director of Equity Derivatives & Equity Finance, Deutsche Bank via IDG Norway

SOA Governance Resource Guide Section: SOA Governance User Implementations and Success Stories