why is aligning economic- and it services so difficult (iess 2014)
DESCRIPTION
Since its inception, Service Orientation has promised to o er seamless alignment of the business and IT aspects of service-oriented systems. Practitioners, however, often report that such alignment is far from being solved. Speci cally, current research in aligning services either re- mains at a too abstract, strategic level, or is too technology-oriented to be really useful in practice. In spite of being an \old" problem, business-IT alignment is still a dilemma. What makes alignment so dicult? In this work we address this fundamental question by questioning what should be aligned, and what are the concerns hindering alignment. This paper explores the conceptual gaps around the notion of service in the two economic- and IT perspectives. By framing the core constructs of Ser- vice Orientation and contrasting those constructs between the economic- and IT perspectives, this paper elicits ve core alignment concerns. We illustrate the concerns using a real-life case study featuring an airport baggage handling system. The alignment concerns pinpoint promising solutions in which the alignment problem can be solved.TRANSCRIPT
Why is Aligning Economic- and IT Services so!Difficult?
Maryam Razavian
VU University Amsterdam
2
20 years of Business-IT Alignment
0018-8670/99/$5.00 © 1999 IBM IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL38, NOS 2&3, 1999 HENDERSON AND VENKATRAMAN
REPRINTED FROM IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL32, NO 1, 1993; © 1993, 1999
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Service Orientation and Alignment
Service Orientation has promised seamless alignment between business and IT Practitioners still report the problem of alignment is far from being solved
The focus of this work
Why is alignment so difficult? What needs to be aligned? What are the main concerns?
It all depends on your perspective
6
What is Business, anyway?
Economic
What is a service?!Economic perspective
• “Services are deeds, processes and performances” (Zeithaml and Bittner, Service Marketing, New York McGraw‐Hill, 1996, p.5.)
• “… economic activities … bringing about a desired change” (Service Marketing, People, Technology, Strategy, 4th edition. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ,2001)
• “... any act of performance that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible” (P. Kotler. Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control, 6th edition. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1988)
• A service system is a value-coproduction configuration of people, technology, other internal and external service systems, and shared information” (Jim Spohrer, Paul Maglio, John Bailey, and Daniel, Computer, January 2007, p. 72)
What is a Service?!IT Perspective
• Web Service: a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network
• SOA: a logical representation of a repeatable activity that has a specified outcome
• Software services represent the functionality that the underlying pieces of software offer [OASIS]
• A Service is a mechanism to enable access to one or more capabilities, where the access is provided using a prescribed interface [Gridipedia]
Two perspectives on services design
Services
Economic Perspective
Technical Perspective
Services for whose provisioning someone has to pay!
Logical representation of a functionality with a public interface.
Two perspectives on services design
Services
Economic Perspective
Technical Perspective
Different Concepts Different Objectives Incompatibilities
What Alignment Implies
• Alignment: process perspective
• Linking
• Balancing
• Alignment: outcome
• Harmony
• Making a Coherent Whole
Our Approach
Q) What are the core elements that need to be aligned?
Q) What are the concerns hindering the alignment?
Economic Perspective
IT Perspective
Alignment
A
B
C
Our Approach
Modeling Notations
Economic Perspective
IT Perspective
Baggage Handling System
Shared Elements Between Perspectives
ACTOR Legal entity participant
SERVICE commercial services logically grouped operations that can
be invoked
INTERACTION economic value transfers
message exchanges
CONTRACT pricing and service quality
valued by the customer
interface specification SLA
Economic Perspective
IT Perspective
16
Airport
Baggage Handling Services
Ground Handler
Airline Airline
Security Provider
Baggage Handling Services-Economic Perspective
[MONEY]
[Handled bagage]
[MONEY]
[Bagage transportation]
[Bagage Management] [MONEY]
[Screening]
[MONEY]
[MONEY]
[Label]
Legend
Value
Transfer
Value
port
Value
interface
Consumer
need
Connect.
element
Actor
Boundary
element
OR
element
AND
element
ActivityMarket
segment
Value
object
[...]
Explosion
element
e3value
1. Actors 2. Services 3. Contracts 4. Interactions
Baggage Handling Services-IT Perspective
SoaML (Service Architecture)
1. Actors 2. Services
Baggage Handling Services-IT Perspective
SoaML (Service Contract)
Contracts
Baggage Handling Services-IT Perspective
SoaML (Service Choreography)
Interactions
Alignment
Corresponding elements should be linked where needed
[Bagage management]
[MONEY]
Link
Link
Economic and IT Perspective
Discrepancies
Concerns for Aligning
Economic Perspective 1. Profitability 2. Economic Reciprocity
IT Perspective 1. Flexibility 2. Adaptability 3. Reusability
Incompatible
General concerns that cross-cut the two perspectives
On Actors (1)
• Actors instances (e.g., Schiphol Airport)
• Why? because it represents a business model: how each actor would make profit or increase utility
• Actor type
• Why? Because actors should be able to come and go on the fly.
Concern 1. How to align actors in such a way that their profitability and openness are ensured simultaneously?
Possible Alignment Solution: Market Segments
Economic Perspective
IT Perspective
On Actors (2) Economic Perspective
IT Perspective
• Why? because it is not the entity that exchanges value in the marketplace
• Why? because it is the consumer of the services offered by `Ground Handler System' and `Security Provider’
Concern 2. how to relate non-legal entities to legal entities?
Possible Alignment Solution: Expense Carrier
On Services Economic Perspective
IT Perspective
• Why? because it focuses on value activities that an actor is willing to pay for
Concern 3. how to design services in such a way that their profitability and reusability are ensured simultaneously?
• Why? because it is a repeatable and reusable capability
Profitability Reusability
Possible Alignment Solution: Capability in the economic perspective
On Contracts
• Contract is value interface (What determines the economic value of a service) àProfitability
• Contract is a service interface (An agreement on how the service is provided or consumed) àInteroperability
[Bagage management]
[MONEY]
Concern 4. How to align contracts in such a way that the contract is value-determinable while it supports interoperability?
Economic Perspective
IT Perspective
Possible Alignment Solution: Analysis models for transforming value interfaces to operations
On Interactions
[Bagage management]
[MONEY]
Economic Perspective
IT Perspective
Economic Reciprocity (Transactionality) Openness
Concern 5. How to align interactions in such a way that openness and transactionality are supported simultaneously?
Possible Alignment Solution: models that frames and highlights how using
independent message transfers a transaction is realized.
Alignment: an architectural problem
Alignment as an architecting
problem
Alignment Concerns
S
W E
N
Guide Architects Reasoning
What about using architecting techniques?
Use architecting techniques to guide
one’s reasoning
Frame the concerns
Treat concerns as first class elements
Framing Alignment Concern
CP
openness profitability
Airport Schiphol+
Compensation Alignment
A viewpoint for aligning actors
Stakeholders and their concerns Q) Who are the stakeholders and what are their concerns?
profit
Capital preservation
Technical debt
An then?
Solve the Old Alignment Problem