Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

7.10. SOA GOVERNANCE FOR FEDERATED IT MODELS

Federated governance structures feature one of the more popular organizational challenges in IT organizations: how to balance economies of scale and efficiency through centrally managed and delivered IT services versus enabling autonomy and innovation within individual business units in a more distributed IT management and delivery model. Federated governance structures attempt to strike the balance by centrally managing infrastructure, networks, and cross-functional IT services while allowing operating units or business units the control and decision making authority for business applications within the individual business units. Often, the relationships between the enterprise IT organization and the business unit IT organizations are, to varying degrees, strained due to the natural tension between centralized IT management and distributed IT management.

Exhibit 7.4 depicts a hypothetical federated SOA governance model. In this example, there is enterprise governance processes conducted under the management control of the enterprise IT staff, and there are also business unit-specific processes within the decision scope of business units. The enterprise governance processes include activities such as enterprise requirements and demand management, Business and IT strategic planning, new project and program submissions, enterprise architecture, portfolio management, funding and budgeting decisions, program management office (PMO), and ...