The early 20th century was a very interesting time; the automobile, the telephone, the radio, and the airplane emerged and became popular. The world would never be the same. Mass production and scientific management brought progress to manufacturing and made goods cheaper and more readily available to more people.

Cutter Fellow Jim Highsmith (of agile development fame) and I have been friends and colleagues since the 1980s. Though our careers have gone in different directions recently, our interests have begun to converge again around his passion for agile development and my passion for project architecture.

The other day, I was chatting with Cutter Fellow Ken Orr, who asked a very good question: "If object and component reuse didn't work, why is service reuse going to be any different?" Since service reuse is key to getting the value out of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), this is an important issue.

Ask any IT professional what phrases spring to mind when you mention "organizational politics," and nine times out of 10 you will get responses such as:

Doing deals

Scoring points

Personal agendas

Getting one over on one's colleagues

Secrecy and subterfuge

Mafia tactics

Win-lose