Last week we launch our new products, after three months of intensive develop, we finished and gave our evaluation version to our customers.

Our product based on the ArcGis Server 9.2 of ESRI, based on dotnet Framework and using WCF Capabilities for performing intranet Service Oriented Architecture.
I should admit that this buzz-words works, I am not sure why and I can't tell how simple is to implement it, but every manager\team-leader\programmer that heard it has a stupid smile on his face, "Hhaaaaaaa so we can use it too?" yep, this was our intention, write it once, use it everywhere.

One more thing on my mind, our complicated server architecture include lots of business-geographic logic, but it worth nothing, cause managers cannot estimate the time you spent on writing your inner algorithm.
Here are some example:

• We published a coordinate transformer service for everyone usage
• We implement a logic for retrieving\querying maps from our server (imagine a clothing-catalog now transform your thoughts to maps-catalog)
• We can also export Rasters from our DB to every customer
• And we have more other server side stuff that we spent a lot of time on it, but the real people to worth it will probably be the other programmers\team-leaders on the near by office.

Lets take a typical manager\customer, try to explain him all this stuff,
It will sound like this:
Me: We implement a great server side logic, every one in our company could use this it will save the other teams days/months/years.
Customer(thinking): he spending my time and money on other teams\projects?!
Customer(saying): what can I see from it right now?
Manager(saying): Yes, show him something, give him to play with this new baby.
Me: Hmm, no. see, now you can't do a thing but in the near future ...
Customer(hearing): bla bla bla... [feeling angry]
Manager(thinking): How do I hired this stupid

This reactions can vary from one to another, but at the end point, customer can only understand things we sees.
Don't try to sell them server side capabilities, and it is a cool feature that everyone can use it, but you should know what every one need and want to get and you should give it to him.

Here are my tips:

1. Programmers & Team-leaders - we always wanted to do a generic things, cool things and other stuff, so we could smile on our way home, (for example: code WPF on GIS Engines using the DLinq underneath all this while writing coast-to-coast unit test using our new mock object with those cool new TFS features for nightly build&running those tests) - do not give up on those features, it will make you happy after all, but use them wisely.
2. Customers - they have a business logic to catch, we should understand their needs and give them something to play with, not just Doom/Fifa like to play with , we should listen, ask interact and understand what will make them smile when this product will ship.
3. Managers - wants their customers happy and they also want something to play with, something to show their managers and other partners\customers to bring more money, listen them too, try to understand what can help them bring more money.
4. Probably if you will listen carefully you could find a good point at the middle when both the customers & managers would be happy, now start thinking what can help you perform those dreams come through,

How do we did this?
I should admit that we do it unintentionally, but it works just great, We used the new AGX(350 build), it gives us a great UI almost for free, why I am saying unintentionally? because while sitting with the customers (long time ago) we talked about UI and Google-Earth-like, This tool is a beta but probably the worth beta in the world, why? because the customers want it, because it makes the customer-friends happy and when the smile we can blow his chest up and smile every time he plays with it.
about the managers? they can do this too, their customers happy, the project in time, you also gave a great buzz-word the always like to say.
For my team? you should ask them, but for me, I am happy because they are, we use the best technology in the world and keep doing cool things. so why not.
This simple customer-driven technic (you can also call it Agile :) gave our team a lot of time\space to implement our server side code\architecture for further usage of other teams.

One more tip (including example):
For each module you write\design on the server try to give something cool that every one can see. (think about a customer-driven name for this module)
Think about the SOA-team that is doing the hard work which no one can appreciate. Show the managers something, do it simple, with minimum time, just do it COOL, well-designed. try it to get to their business-logic.
For example:  If they need to travel around the world and you create a great logic of minimal distance (shortest path), implement it on a simple map, you would probably do this for your own experiments so just publish it so every one could see this.

Enjoy, Relax, Freedom.