Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

6.25. TRANSFORMING SOA POLICIES INTO BEHAVIORAL NORMS

An emerging research area for SOA governance and IT governance relates to the concept of transitioning from policies to behavioral norms, and how these impact the relative scalability of governance. When SOA governance is initially implemented, most organizations are new to SOA and governance, and are therefore not accustomed to explicit enforcement of policies under a formally defined and explicitly enforced governance model. Explicit policy-driven governance will be difficult for many organizations where the corporate culture is not one of explicit policies and where informal governance dominates current decisions, or consensus based models dominate decision making calculus. The definition and implementation of policy-driven governance will strain current decision-making mechanisms, and will formalize governance processes that have been more collegial to date.

Policy-driven governance can be uncomfortable in its early implementation phases, which is why we urge the development of change management models, education and awareness campaigns, and other approaches to easing your way into it.

That said, once your governance model has matured and policies are known and understood, there will be a magical transformation in your enterprise; suddenly policies will not be "enforced" in the punitive sense of the word. They will be known already, with the expectations understood, and thus policies will become behavioral norms rather ...