1. A method comprising: accessing, by a computer system, a functional definition of a service to be implemented as part of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) application, the functional definition describing a proposed functionality of the service; determining, by the computer system, a service type for the service based at least in part on the functional definition; selecting, by the computer system, a template based at least in part on the service type, the template identifying information to be collected regarding the service; enabling, by the computer system, implementation of one or more software services based at least in part on the information received via the template; retrieving, by the computer system, a deployment plan that specifies the one or more software services to be deployed as part of the SOA application; retrieving, by the computer system, a deployment properties file that specifies one or more target servers for deploying the one or more software services, the deployment properties file including the information received via the template; and automatically deploying, by the computer system, the SOA application based on the deployment plan and the deployment properties file.