Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

10.9. CREATION OF AN ENTERPRISE GOVERNANCE EXECUTIVE

An interesting recent trend in IT organizations is the appointment of a governance executive and supporting organization with a direct reporting relationship to the chief information officer (CIO). While not widespread at this time, we believe this is an increasing trend, certainly for publicly traded firms where Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and other regulatory compliance issues justify such a role. These enterprise governance organizations are established to provide a single point of process ownership for all IT governance activities and extensions to IT governance relating to funding oversight and budget management. In some cases, IT security may fall under this organization. In public firms, this structure provides a focal point for IT governance activities that relate to and support compliance requirements.

With the increased interest in SOA and SOA governance, we feel that linkage of corporate, IT, and SOA governance is essential to foster alignment of all governance and oversight under one executive; either reporting directly to the CIO for IT and SOA governance, or to the chief executive officer (CEO) for corporate governance.