I've lost count of the number of times I've seen throwaway comments exhorting companies to "create a centre of excellence (CoE)" (mostly, for initiatives like SOA or BPM). Vendor / pundit / analyst / journalist: "Having trouble? Establish a centre of excellence!" Customer: "Oh, that's OK then, I'll do that."

But let's take a deeper look. Quite aside from the role that one of these beasts plays (something I'll attack in a future post), what does a best practice CoE look like?

From what I've seen out there in real-world implementations of SOA and BPM initiatives, I suspect that the best results come from having a good mix of responsibilities / personalities in the group. Something like an even distribution across this matrix of perspectives:

Although it's tempting to staff a CoE with good dependable technical people that you understand, you need a good mix of business-focused types and technology-focused types, because those business-focused types will help keep expectations practical, and help keep business people from outside the CoE engaged and willing to help. And it's vital to get a good mix of practical and visionary focus, because rolling out new concepts and approaches to delivering IT capabilities requires both "selling" and getting things done.

That's my view. What do you think?