Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

7.9. FEDERATED ORGANIZATIONAL MODELS

Federated IT organizations pose an interesting dilemma for SOA governance. SOA governance in itself is complex enough, and adding more complex IT management models and governance SOA in those scenarios can be challenging. In Chapter 4, we presented a simple diagnostic to help determine the current IT management structure on a continuum from centralized to distributed. Two federated IT management structures are between these two extremes: strongly federated and weakly federated. These are reviewed below:

• Strongly Federated IT Management Structure. Central decision authority for shared infrastructure and enterprise wide IT capabilities, while business application and business unit specific decisions are made by business unit CIOs. Business unit CIOs directly report to a corporate CIO, and report indirectly (dotted line) to the business unit executives. Business unit enterprise architects report directly or have dual reporting to a corporate enterprise architect, and directly to or indirectly to the business unit CIO.

• Weakly Federated IT Management Structure. In a weakly federated structure, there is central decision authority for shared infrastructure and enterprise wide IT capabilities, and like strongly federated structures, business applications and business unit specific decisions are made by business unit CIOs. However, in this case, business unit CIOs report directly to the business unit executives and indirectly to the corporate CIO. Similarly, ...