Help - Frequently Asked Questions
1. Getting started
1.1 About The SOA Strategy Planning Tool
What is the purpose of the tool?
The SOA strategy planning tool helps you to understand where your organisation is within its SOA initiative. Through the use of an interactive questionnaire, it assesses your organisation's SOA capabilities in six critical dimensions:
- Understanding of key SOA concepts
- Current business and IT strategies and associated governance processes
- Architecture processes
- Organisation structure and skills
- Governance of the service lifecycle
- Technology capabilities.
If you purchase premium access, the tool will use the information to provide you with a personalised action plan to move forward.
What does the tool provide?
Following completion of the assessment, we analyse your responses to the questionnaire and provide you with an online report that presents your score in the different dimensions on a spider diagram to provide you with an overall perspective on your SOA initiative in terms of SOA concepts, strategy, architecture, organisation and people, governance and technology.
Is the tool really free of charge?
Yes. The free-of-charge tool takes the assessment data that you provide about aspects of your SOA initiative and capabilities and produces a scoring chart.
What is "premium access"?
For a modest fee (200 GBP), you gain access to premium functionality. With premium access, the tool will generate a personalised SOA Strategy Action Plan report, which includes:
- the scores from the online report
- benchmark comparisons for your industry, company size and geography
- (most importantly) a personalised action plan based on your responses to the questionnaire
Can I see a sample of a typical assessment report?
A sample of the Personalised SOA Strategy Action Plan report can be downloaded from the tool's Welcome page (http://www.itstrategyplans.com/soa).
How do I purchase premium access?
You can purchase premium access using a credit card or your PayPal account. Upon payment confirmation you will immediately receive an unique 8-digit premium access code, which you enter on the "Calculate and generate report" page to receive your report.
Why would I use this tool, rather than tools provided by vendors?
Many of the SOA suppliers offer free assessment and planning tools. In some cases, these tools are primarily focused on assessment and although they will help you to understand your level of SOA maturity, they do not offer the actionable advice to help you plan your SOA initiative given your level of maturity. In other cases, the assessment tool also includes a planning element. However, in such cases the tools are likely to be oriented to the supplier's offerings, which in most cases will not be sufficiently broad to support a comprehensive SOA initiative.
Our tool combines assessment and planning, and provides a vendor-independent and holistic perspective on SOA which considers the broad range of capabilities and technologies required to maximise the value of your investment in SOA. In addition, of course, you can carry out the self-assessment exercise at no charge. It's only access to a personalised action plan and set of industry benchmarks which costs money.
Do I need to download and install any software?
No. The tool is completely browser-based. If you purchase premium access then you will require the Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to read your personalised action plan. The Acrobat Reader can be downloaded from Adobe here.
Is there any limit on how long I can use the tool?
No. There is currently no time limit on free-of-charge or premium access to the tool. Once you have obtained a premium access code you can use it to generate as many reports as you like, whenever you like. We commit to making the tool available for at least 12 months from launch (until June 2008), and we will update the tool as and when improvements become necessary. If for any reason we have to discontinue the tool, we will provide prior written notice to everyone who has purchased premium access.
Who has produced the tool?
The tool has been produced by Macehiter Ward-Dutton (see here for more details) and JEMM Research (see here for more details).
1.2. Signing Up, Signing In, and Managing Your Account
Will I have to sign up to use the SOA strategy planning tool?
Yes, you need to register with us in order to use the SOA strategy planning tool. You'll need to supply various details, including a preferred username and email address. We use your email address to send you an auto-generated password associated with your username (once you're registered, you can change this to something more memorable). To register, just click the Register for free link at the top of the SOA strategy planning tool Welcome page. After you fill out the registration form, we'll email you a password to access the tool.
How do I sign in and sign out?
From the Welcome page, type your username and password details into the login box. When you're signed in, you can sign out at any time by clicking on the "sign out" link in the menu bar. When you sign out you'll automatically be redirected to the tool's Welcome page.
Why do I need to provide an email address to sign up?
An email address is required so that we can send you the generated password associated with your username. An email address is also required so that we can send you the code required to access your Personalised SOA Strategy Action Plan if you purchase premium access.
I have lost my account username and/or password. Can I get a new one?
Just follow the [Get a reminder of your login details] link on the help page. You'll need to provide us with the email address you registered with: if it matches a customer record in our database we'll email your username and password to that email address.
Can I change the assigned password?
Yes. First, log in to the tool (if you’ve forgotten your password, request a reminder as above). Then follow the [Update your personal details] link from the help page, and you can change your password to something more memorable in the resulting form.
Why do I need to provide details about my geography, organisation size and industry?
We use this information to benchmark your organisation against others in the same geography, industry and of a similar size, which you can see if you purchase premium access.
1.3. Privacy and Security
Who can see my information?
The information you provide for the SOA strategy planning tool information is only available to you. Please see our privacy policy for more details.
Is the tool anonymous?
When calculating industry or geographic benchmark reports, the data provided to customers is completely anonymous. All reports and analyses work from anonymised, aggregated data.
2. Working with the Tool
2.1. Creating, Editing, Saving, and Restoring an Assessment
How do I create a new assessment?
Once you have signed in, select [Open a new, empty assessment] from the Welcome page to create a new assessment.
How long does it take to finish the assessment?
The assessment has around 150 questions, split into 6 sections: Concepts, Strategy, Architecture, Organisation & People, Governance and Technology & Infrastructure. Assuming you have all the information available for the 6 domains, it should take no more than 2 hours to complete. Don't worry if you do not have all the information to hand: you can save your work at any time and return to it at a later date, once you have the information to complete unanswered questions.
How do I save and restore assessments so I can come back to the tool later?
You can interrupt your work at any time and save your current session by pressing the [Save] button within the assessment section of the tool. When signing in back to the SOA strategy planning tool, you have the option of restoring your previously saved work. Alternatively you can click on the [Restore] button from within the assessment section of the tool.
How do I calculate my assessment score?
Calculate your assessment score at any time by selecting the [Calculate & generate report] menu tab.
What is the difference between "calculate score" and "generate report"?
The "calculate score" functionality provides you with access to an online summary of your SOA maturity and capability, and is free of charge. The "generate report" functionality allows you to purchase or use a previously-purchased premium access code to generate a PDF report, which includes: the scores from the online report; benchmark comparisons of your scores against the averages in your industry, company size and geography; and (most importantly) a personalised SOA strategy action plan, based on your responses to the questionnaire.
Can I update my answers to the questionnaire?
Yes, you can amend your answers to the questionnaire and, if you have purchased premium access, generate multiple versions of your personalised report.
What happens if I make a mistake? Do I have to undo all of my changes?
If you make a mistake, the tool provides a couple of features to make it easy to correct things:
- If you want to correct an answer to a specific question (i.e. select completly agree instead of partially disagree), just click on the corresponding radio button.
- If you want to change a complete section, just press the [reset] button associated with that assessment section. All your answers in that section will be reset.
- If you want to undo all your changes since you last saved your work, use the [Restore] option to return to your last saved assessment
- Finally, at any time you can open a new, empty assessment from the Welcome page.
2.2. Using the tool
Our "Quick Start" guide (available as a PDF document at www.itstrategyplans.com/soa/quickstart.pdf) provides an overview of how you work with the tool.
What is the Personalised SOA Strategy Action Plan Report?
If you have purchased premium access, you can enter your premium access code to view your Personalised SOA Strategy Action Plan report. The report includes:
- a personalised action plan based on your responses to the questionnaire
- benchmark comparisons for your industry, company size and geography
- the scores from the online report.
If you have not purchased premium access, then you can access our Paypal payment service to purchase access using a credit card.
How does it work?
The personalised action plan is produced using a model which maps your scores in each assessment section and subsection to a database of actions. The model also understands dependencies and relationships between sections, subsections and questions, and takes those into account when generating the action plan.
How can I get help on answering the questions in the assessment?
The tool’s assessment section offers context-sensitive help, in the form of popups which are provided for each section and subsection of the assessment. Just click on the [?] links next to section headings and subsection headings within the assessment.
Is any other help available?
The [Help] tab on the tool menu provides a number of useful links which should help you find your way around:
- A link to the Quick Start guide: a small PDF document with all the basic information to start using the tool
- A link to the FAQ page: this document
- A link to the registration page, which you will need to follow if you are not already registered to use the tool
- A link to get a password reminder, if you forget your password. Your password will be sent to your registered e.mail address
- A link to get a premium access code reminder, if you forget your purchased premium access code . Your code will be sent to your registered email address
- A link to update your personal details - including the option to change your password.
3. Purchasing premium access
How do I purchase a premium access code?
You can purchase a premium access by clicking the Buy Now link from the Calculate page. It forwards you to our online commerce service provider (PayPal) which manages the entire purchasing process.
You will arrive at an itstrategyplans.com-branded PayPal payment page. Choose whether you would like to pay with a credit/debit card or using an existing Paypal account, and then complete the payment forms as PayPal directs. You should be automatically returned to itstrategyplans.com/soa.
Remember: You do not have to be a PayPal account holder in order to purchase a premium access code: you can use any supported credit or debit card.
What happens when I complete my purchase?
On returning to itstrategyplans.com/soa, the tool will confirm the details of your purchase, and display your premium access code. For your convenience, your code will also be emailed to you.
What happens if something goes wrong in the payment process?
To help prevent fraud, when you return to the tool after visiting PayPal, the tool checks back with PayPal to verify additional details associated with your purchase. If there is some kind of verification error, you will receive a message error explaining that verification of your purchase could not be completed. In these (very rare) cases, we will be automatically notified of the situation and will contact you to resolve the situation.
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