Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

8.7. SUMMARY

This chapter described the challenges of implementing SOA and services lifecycle governance. As we have stated, the SOA and Services Development Lifecycle processes in many organizations have not been revised or adapted to SOA or services, and thus the SOA process can be hamstrung with a poorly-defined and poorly-governed SDLC. Furthermore, many organizations also place emphasis on portions of the lifecycle, such as design-time governance, quality assurance and testing, or runtime governance, but rarely have they focused on the total lifecycle requirements of SOA or services. In addition, often there is no clear separation of the provider-side or consumer-side of the lifecycle either, which can be problematic for clarity of roles and responsibilities. Finally, our enterprise SOA governance model frames the SOA and services lifecycle governance processes as but one of the Four Tiers of SOA Governance. Implementing a well-governed SOA life-cycle is only a portion of an enterprise SOA governance model, and it will have connections and dependencies on higher-level governance processes we have categorized in two higher level tiers of governance—Enterprise/Strategic Governance processes and SOA Operating Model Governance processes.