Deploying a service-oriented architecture is a great way to gain continuous incremental improvement in service delivery and achieve IT operational excellence. But be patient—SOA strategies take time to implement. Here's a 90-day plan to get you started.

Month 1 > Design your SOA

Focus on the entity you're modeling—either your department or the whole organization. Think holistically: See across artificial boundaries created by politics and management.

Identify key business functions—for example, in IT, this may be system support, help desk, or software engineering.

Ensure that business planning and group modeling folks understand SOA design and are aligned with the business goals.

Month 2 > Develop SOA contracts

Now that you have a service-oriented model, apply contracts for each service you've designed. Contracts help define the services boundaries and build communication among all users.

Here are some of the attributes you should define in your contract:

> List of valid inputs and outputs.

> Key point of service contract.

> Time to escalation when the service doesn't deliver as expected.

> Access policies.

> Service-level agreements.

Month 3 > Take on a use case

At this point, it's time to put your design skills to the test. Take note: Few architects get it right the first time out. Re-factoring is part of the task and should be done throughout early implementations; you may need to re-examine how services were created, or to develop shared services.

Identify a use case for this exercise. This could be a business process that's proven to be unacceptable and needs improvement—for example, it takes too long to get a callback from the help desk. Implement the services you need to support the use case and turn it out to the consumers.

Educate users about the service contract. Explain how to adhere to the inputs and obtain a service. But also let the users know that doing so will let them scale more effectively during high-volume periods.