Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

3.1. EXPANDED FOUR TIERS OF GOVERNANCE

Another view of the four-tier model is depicted in Exhibit 3.3. This expanded view breaks out SOA Enterprise Architecture activities into two "tiers"—one focused on the SOA "Architecture" governance requirements, and the other focused on SOA "Services" governance.

SOA "Architecture" governance refers to the SOA Enterprise Architecture activities and references architecture artifacts that focus on the overall SOA reference architecture, the logical and physical views of the SOA reference architecture, and the SOA platform architecture and specifications.

SOA "Services" governance focuses on the many dimensions of governing the services described by the SOA Enterprise Architecture process. Thus we would be focusing on areas such as the services reference model, the services layers of the overall SOA enterprise architecture, services design and implementation standards, interface design standards, payload design standards, service naming conventions, version management standards, and best practices for services identification, modeling and design, and implementation. While the services are integral to a service-oriented architecture, separating the services-centric governance activities from the architecture-centric aspects of SOA will help ensure better interoperability and clear separation of services from the platform.

A critical layer of the Expanded Four Tiers of Governance to focus attention to is the SOA and Services Lifecycle Governance ...