Service Oriented Gridlock: Start with Stovepipes

Second in a series on Service Oriented Gridlock (SOG)...

If stovepipes are so terrible, why are there so many of them? Where did they come from? Well, the basic scenario is, the business wants some function, they call up the local Java, Excel VBA or Lotus Notes hacker and get it delivered to them. This can be a remarkably efficient way of getting things done. Someone wants something that is going to help them make more money, or accomplish their mission, and someone delivers it to them. The user is the primary focus of the development. Contrast this to the average enterprise project which spends a year gathering requirements, getting consensus from different groups about what priorities to do first, fighting about design and approved technologies among various senior architects, and then maybe delivers something that does about 50% of what the business need was, in a semi-usable form, and they probably don't even need it anymore. If I am a user, I want a stovepipe! I want a development project dedicated to me.