Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

6.19. GOVERNANCE THREADS AND GOVERNANCE PROCESS ORCHESTRATION

Some business and process policies can only be enforced by stringing together multiple governance and management processes, and then enforcing that business policy across these related processes. To accommodate this scenario, we have coined the term "governance thread." A governance thread is coordinated enforcement of a multi-tier SOA policy across multiple SOA governance tiers (e.g., Enterprise/Strategic tier, SOA Operating Model tier, and the SOA/Services Lifecycle tier).

Policy enforcement is established based on the types of policies you require to achieve your SOA governance goals and close the critical SOA governance gaps. In general, the following rules of thumb will help you frame your policy enforcement model:

• Policy categories will determine governance enforcement mechanisms. In general, the type of policy will indicate how it will be enforced, whether manually by boards and reviews, or automated using governance tools.

Exhibit 6.8 illustrates how various policy categories are enforced using various governance policy enforcement mechanisms.

Based on the policy category and type, this exhibit shows how you can begin to develop the governance policy enforcement model by assigning policies to be manually enforced using a governance organizational model and board structure, or using governance enforcement processes for some policies such as architecture and design policies, or completely automating the enforcement ...