The Insider's Guide to Business and IT Agility
By Mohamad Afshar, VP of Product Management, Oracle and Benjamin Moreland, Director for Foundation Services, The Hartford , 02/15/2007
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Editor's Note: For Part I of this article, click here.
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.
Figure 1: Essence of Governance with SOA
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:
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.
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ROUNDTABLE: Stretch Your Budget with smart SOA Governance-A Look at Successful Case Studies
ROUNDTABLE: Open Source Market Update
Insurance: Explore how SOA & BPM are driving down expenses and improving ROI
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June 3, 2009
One of the most compelling trends in the enterprise business technology space over the past year has been the emergence of cloud computing. In ebizQ’s upcoming Qcamp virtual un-conference, leading industry experts and practitioners will explore the role of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM) in supporting cloud-computing initiatives. Additionally, the new skills that developers and IT managers need for successful cloud development will be discussed.Register
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