Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

7.11. BEST PRACTICE SOA GOVERNANCE ORGANIZATIONAL ROADMAP

As you frame your enterprise SOA governance organizational model, consider an incremental roadmap approach that begins with focused core teams and expands over time, as necessary, and as your SOA maturity and enterprise coverage increases. You should map out a roadmap model that depicts when governance boards phase in, how long they persist, and when they can be eliminated based on the maturity of governance over time. The following represent governance organizational model best practices to consider:

• Start with an SOA core team initially, supported by one or more working groups.

• Expand the governance model to include business and IT executives, as well as an architectural review board. This will be the start of the business engagement model if the SOA initiative did not begin from a business unit or business-driven perspective.

• Expand the governance organization to accommodate key service categories and service portfolio management disciplines. Do not rush into formal and complex services portfolio management models. You will most likely need this, but not until you have enough services and SOA value generated that can be used to justify dedicated service portfolio management processes and headcount.

• Add business oversight for business architecture, business process portfolio managers, and business service portfolio managers.

• Keep governance boards to a maximum of three supported by working groups as needed.