It is ready. It is documented. Here are the cliff notes:

Using BPM, SOA, MDM, and Cloud Computing a small team was able to solve the problem of 'description' in a month. This solution was then used to automate IT Governance for a specific set of warfighting capabilities at the US Department of Defense. Now, this solution is being looked at for applicability across the large scale of capabilities within DoD.

My first response when reading the title: "That's a lot of acronyms/buzzwords in one sentence." Nonetheless, it's accurate. And it supports what I've seen as the next evolution of the disparate architectural styles - no one of them can actually deliver the promised benefits. It is the appropriate combination of these styles that enables that delivery. In other words, it's not "wow, SOA". It is "what can I do with the capabilities enabled by SOA?" In this case, it was "what can I do with the capabilities enabled by SOA, BPM, MDM, and Cloud Computing?" The first three were used to solve the problem at hand. The last one was used to do it at great speed.

Last, a bit about the problem of 'description'. Each discipline, whether business, technical, risk, project, organization, or (...) has its own unique perspective. Hence, people who have grown up in these disciplines are equipped with a set of tools that emphasizes certain strengths and at best ignores weaknesses. At worst, some of these tools purport to be able to solve world peace. Practitioners should (and sometimes, do) know better. So the way a business analyst describes a problem is different than how a technical architect would describe the very same problem. And that is different than how a security analyst, or a project manager would describe the very same problem. And of course, all of these dialects differ from how the actual customer describes that problem. The solution to this problem, then, would need to find a common language between the various disciplines and tranlsate their dialects in this language (yes, I'm talking about ontology without using the buzzword).

No, I did not suddenly lose my mind, or start using mind-altering pharmaceuticals. This has happened. This was done. And here is the link. Feel free to drop me a line if you have specific questions that could not have been addressed in the document.

Aleks