Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

Chapter 10. SOA Governance and Beyond

This chapter will explore the future of governance in all forms corporate, enterprise, Information Technology (IT), and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) governance. We have by now painted a fairly comprehensive picture of how to plan, model, and implement enterprise SOA governance. We have explored general concepts of governance, developed various tools and mechanisms available to you to help implement governance, and suggested many best practices and approaches we hope will help your organization realize SOA value through effective SOA governance. We feel that governance in general, and IT and SOA governance specifically, are immature yet emerging disciplines. There are many dimensions of governance that must be better understood and defined in order to ensure stakeholder input and oversight over critical aspects of enterprise IT and SOA initiatives.

For example, we always find a clear and direct relationship between the organizational structure of a firm, how its IT organization is structured, and the resultant SOA governance organizational model. The factors of organizational size and structure, as well as the industry they compete in and the relative strategic impact of IT operations on their corporate performance, all add up in the establishment of a viable and effective governance model. It is no surprise that the IT organization is a reflection of the corporate structure. The governance of IT then will be directly impacted by the ...