“There is nothing permanent except change” – Heraclitus 6th Century BC. To lead in the business environment is to embrace change. In most of organizations, senior executives to developers struggle with one common factor – the “UNKNOWNS” and primarily suffer because of the following underlying reasons:

A business process is a set of activities, tasks and events performed by systems and people to achieve a business goal. Commissioning a process involves several steps ranging from the ideation of the process through the building, and continuous improvement of the process – this is typically referred to as the life-cycle of a process. Business Process Management refers to the concept of managing a business process through its life-cycle.

Service Oriented Architecture is now a common concept, it appeals to common sense, and its not hard to see reason it it. But, before rushing into a big-bang implementation of SOA, an organization needs to go through a self-assessment to understand where to start, and what to expect. Here is a basic guide for an SOA self-assessment that will throw light on some of these areas.