Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

1.6. GOVERNANCE IS ABOUT RESULTS AND APPROPRIATE USE OF RESOURCES

Without governance, there will be no results. Governance is focused on ensuring appropriate use of resources in an organization to drive the organizational actions that will bring about the desired results. Resources in a for-profit organization include funding, personnel, organizations, capital assets, and even intellectual property.

Often, a discussion of governance finishes with a statement roughly equivalent to the following: "Funding is the ultimate governance mechanism." What most practitioners would agree with is that funding is a primary governance enforcement and incentive mechanism, and judicious use of funding models can facilitate the realization of an effective and transparent governance model for your organization. Governance ensures that organizational resources are allocated to important initiatives, and that they are consumed and leveraged wisely. Therefore, governance must focus on critical aspects of the business where allocation of resources, and oversight of the use of those resources, is possible. SOA governance should follow the same approach.