Holistic Service-Oriented Management

by Paul Allen

Organizations have traditionally organized IT along reductionist lines leading to a compartmentalization of IT into development, operations, and more. More broadly, the IT industry itself is full of niche comfort zones. One of the unfortunate consequences of the niche mentality is that the execution management of software is treated as an entirely separate subject from such topics as analysis, design, and development. While separation of concerns is necessary for specialization and discipline, it becomes unhealthy when important interconnections and relationships between domains of interest are ignored -- when separation leads to divorce!