Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

1.12. SOA GOVERNANCE IMPACTS IT GOVERNANCE AND ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

A key consideration when planning SOA governance is that it will have a rather profound impact on your current IT governance processes as well as your current enterprise architecture process. Oftentimes SOA governance efforts will expose weaknesses in both governance processes. Exhibit 1.3 depicts how an SOA initiative will impact IT and enterprise architecture governance.

For example, SOA initiatives will always stress IT strategic planning processes, project submission and approval, project management processes, funding and budgeting decisions, asset ownership issues, and portfolio management processes (if they exist). Many of these IT governance processes are not very robust, and thus SOA exposes the absence or fragility of these processes very quickly.

Enterprise architecture (EA) governance processes will similarly be challenged by the inception of an SOA initiative. Depending on the robustness of current enterprise architecture disciplines, organizations will have a relatively easier time introducing SOA governance into their EA governance model, especially if they have already formalized architecture governance processes, policies, and oversight of projects as they are managed through the project delivery process in that organization.

Figure 1.3. SOA Governance Impacts Existing Governance Organizations and Processes

SOA governance will place greater demands on those IT organizations whose EA discipline ...