NSDI Cooperative Agreements Program
Best Practices in Geospatial Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Project
Interim and Final Project Report Format

Brief documentation of the data and server configuration approach taken is required in a form, with graphics, that can be followed by others for adoption. The Interim report should be brief and follow the outline below. The Final Report shall include the documentation of Best Practices in SOA and the processes applied in the design, deployment, and evaluation of the established services. Keep the report short and to the point.  All reports will be posted to the FGDC grants Web site.

Date
Agreement Number:
Project title:
Indicate whether Interim or Final report
Organization: Name, address, Web address
Principal Investigator: Name, telephone, email
Collaborating Organizations: Name, point of contact, address, Web address

Executive Summary
Write a short paragraph (under 200 words) describing the key successes or outcomes of the project. Interim Report shall highlight anticipated outcomes and actual milestones, whereas the Final report summary should describe the project as completed.

Project Narrative
Summarize the project activities. Include its accomplishments, successes strengths and weaknesses, further challenges, and collaboration activities, as appropriate. The following headings are provided to structure the content of the Interim and Final Report Sections. The Final report should include both Interim and Final sections.

SOA Definitions and Approach (Interim Report)
Describe the process used and the outcomes of the development of common definitions and criteria for the selection of the appropriate SOA modeling environment for the project, in concert with the other awards in this category.
Include (within report or as separate document) the agreed definitions and selected modeling environment.

Requirements and Process Definition (Interim Report)
Describe the requirements gathering and engagement of providers and users in support of the business process(es) being addressed.
Describe the constituent user base and the business process design.
Identify issues and encountered in the process modeling and documentation.
Summarize the data requirements to satisfy this business process.

SOA Deployment and Acceptance (Final Report)
Describe what process or tools were used to convert the design phase into running service interfaces, and what issues arose or what choices were made.
Describe the operating environment and all quality-of-service requirements.

Best Practices (Final Report)
Summarize applied standards and specifications.
Document all monitoring or testing performed on the service to measure the quality and availability of the service.
Identify any optimization applied to improve quality of service.
Identify changes in approach taken in the deployment and acceptance phase that differed from the original design.
Identify any service patterns that might be applicable to other services.
Describe the selection and performance of service binding patterns (GET, POST, SOAP, other) used in the solution.
Describe how common vocabularies, ontologies, and data structures were supported by this project.
Identify measures that could be/were taken to improve the scalability and extensibility of this service.
Document the results of applications using this service, including any current project experience with service chaining, composition, or orchestration.
Identify any emergent technical requirements that should be considered in future deployments based on the experience of this project.
Describe the ease and issues of re-deployment of this service to other host sites (government, commercial, ISP).
Identify preferred measures to assure service availability and reliability (redundancy, failover approach, hosting requirements, synchronization approach, service recovery time).
Identify any prospective service level agreements emerging from the deployment of this SOA.

Project management (Final Report)
Will this project's activities continue in the future?
What are the recommendations for a follow-on phase, if any?
Requirements (more technical assistance, software, other?)

Feedback on Cooperative Agreements Program (to be completed for the final report)
What are the program strengths and weaknesses?
Where does the program make a difference?
Was the assistance you received sufficient or effective?
What would you recommend doing differently?
Are there factors that are missing or additional needs that should be considered?
Are there program management concerns that need to be addressed? Time frame?
If you were to do this again, what would you do differently?