Service-Oriented Agile Projects -- Contradiction or Necessity?

by Paul Allen

A harsh economic recession calling for renewed cost reduction with an emphasis on tactical solution-delivery projects causes concerns over the effectiveness of enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) and puts agile methodologies back in the limelight. SOA and agile are commonly seen as opposites, but opposites that don't attract. On the one hand, agile emphasizes a short game that is about human interplay, simplicity, speed, and transparency, while SOA is inherently a long game that is about discipline, commonality, formality, and specification. Each approach has its camps of followers and -- it must be said -- is not without some success.