Introduction

In the accompanying article, we described a framework for service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance. Governance—whether it is financial, business, legal, or IT—is about getting people to do the right thing at the right time. In other words, it is about encouraging the behavior that will achieve your business goals. SOA governance is no different.

In this article, we describe best practices for organizations to follow as they move through the six steps to successful SOA governance. We also address how the SOA governance journey fits into our Level 5 SOA Maturity Model (MM).

Context

As we described in our prior article, governance can be defined as the interaction between policies (what), decision-makers (who), and processes (how). (See Figure 1.) Companies with mature SOAs have established successful governance solutions to help individuals make the proper decisions within the context of the problem space. These companies have also achieved an effective layering of SOA capabilities in areas such as technology, standards, architecture, governance, organizational structure, processes and strategy. SOA and SOA governance require a change of culture, especially within companies that have legacy systems and siloed operations. An SOA Roadmap built using a maturity model, such as our Five-Level SOA Maturity Model*1, allows companies to begin the SOA journey, leveraging and building on each successful step. Governance is a significant part of that journey.

Key Leverage Points for SOA Governance

Since SOA is one philosophy or framework within enterprise architecture (EA), a company’s goals and objectives for SOA should also align with the business. Typical business goals include:

• Reducing overall total cost of ownership (TCO)
• Increasing the ease of doing business
• Speeding time to market
• Enabling scalability
• Achieving business agility
• Fostering innovation
• Enabling compliance

These business goals should drive everything within EA, including SOA—and successful SOA helps to achieve these goals (although the initial SOA efforts will likely increase TCO until shared services and organizational structures are put in place). To meet these goals, the different business areas—architecture, technology infrastructure, finance, portfolios, people, projects, and operations—must be aligned. Governance policies should be designed to ensure this alignment.