Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

Chapter 7. SOA Governance Organizational Models

One of the most challenging and misunderstood aspects of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) governance is establishing a viable organizational model for governance processes and policy enforcement. One of the most common SOA governance mistakes we see is the misconception that implementing a sophisticated governance board structure is the equivalent of implementing effective SOA governance. It is not. Implementing governance boards without clearly defined goals, principles, and policies, as well as clear definition of the board's role in enforcing SOA policies, will result in lots of meetings but ineffective SOA governance. In fact, effective SOA governance should result in as few boards as necessary to govern your SOA initiative and services, but as many as necessary to effectively govern in order to realize your SOA goals. The rightsizing of SOA governance is an important consideration because from a stakeholder perspective, any SOA governance is too much governance, and will initially be more intrusive than the projects and business units prefer.

Furthermore, adding new governance processes and explicit enforcement will feel like "over-governance" initially. That is the nature of governance. Asserting control over decisions that were made by individuals or business units will often be a painful transition. However, planning for this and having a pre-mitigation strategy to address organizational conflicts and exceptions will go ...