Building a service-oriented architecture requires great technical skill, but don't forgot that SOA technology first and foremost is about business processes and agility. Following these four tips will help you keep business goals front and center in your SOA planning and development.

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1. Prioritize project phases by user benefit, not technology implementation

Your SOA implementation will require plenty of technology upgrades, but a good project can solve some tactical business problems before it addresses the back-end infrastructure, says Keith Sievers, CIO at Kemper Auto and Home Insurance in Jacksonville, Fla.

At Kemper, Sievers led an SOA project to replace policy applications that date to the 1980s. He began by revamping services for price-quoting, error-handling and credit-card payment processing; that meant addressing certain infrastructure upgrades right away, such as those for data modeling. He was able to put off behind-the-scenes services -- such as batch processing, which takes care of renewals, he says. "Try to front-load your project with things that are more important to users. To them, [your four-year SOA project] looks like a two-year project," he adds.

Figuring out which pieces of an SOA project will have the biggest business benefits requires user involvement in planning and ongoing decision making, experts say. "At some organizations, IT defines the business processes," says Bart Perkins, a former CIO of Dole Foods and Yum Brands who founded Leverage Partners, an IT consulting firm. "But users don't necessarily always buy into IT's definition. And that does create a problem."