What is the best approach to SOA adoption and best practices for high ROI?

Unfortunately there is no magic bullet. Firstly you will need to sell the concept to the Sr. Executives. Then you will need to come up with a target architecture and provide a roadmap.

You will need to look at the current landscape and document the constraints of the current tightly coupled architecture. Map out out key systems that could be de-coupled and understand the cloud strategy (if your company is willing to move to cloud - Cloud is not a perquisite). Evaluate and select an ESB suitable for your organisation (Cost, Skill set etc.). Run a P.O.C.

Work with legacy; build on it rather than trying to replace it.

Hope this helps.

This reminds me of my first SOA project where we selected a critical project that needed heavy integration with different systems with different technologies, business sponsoring was very high and there was no window of questionning the feasability or the value of SOA, it was just DONE and success continued...

Involve the business

Incorporate the cost within a business solution. e.g. Online portal or process automation.

Build business case with focus on ROI and TCO

Chose mid size project so you can show a recognized benefits faster

Ensure resources availability from clients side.

The best approach to SOA adoption is to begin with quick win project where :

• new and change business requests are frequent,
• Time to market is important,
• scope of integration is limited,
• duration of implementation is relatively short,

However, the best practices for high ROI are:

• deploying SOA in a spaguetti architecture,
• Minimizing the TCO by starting deploying an entry level even an open source ESB,
• Guarantee an internal team for first level support,