Whether your organization's service-oriented architecture (SOA) has 50 services being used by one customer, or 50 customers using one service, you need SOA governance; increased business agility depends on it. SOA governance provides the ability to quickly and continuously translate and transmit business strategy and requirements into the processes, policies, and controls that will guide the evolution of your infrastructure and your enterprise. Failure to provide effective SOA governance exposes your organization to serious risks resulting from:Insufficient adoption of services,Fragmented approaches to SOA, Resources wasted on services that can't be reused, Rampant and redundant service creation across siloed SOA initiatives,Ineffective communication of priorities and best practices, Cultural resistance to change For any organization that has adopted SOA as its primary approach to enterprise architecture, governance becomes the conduit that connects and aligns corporate, IT, and business unit objectives. For these organizations, effective governance ensures that communication, collaboration, and the two-way flow of information keep SOA initiatives and investments inextricably connected to the enterprise to deliver sustainable business value.
Get Serious About SOA
Governance: A Five-Step Action
Plan for Architects An Oracle White Paper Updated August 2008
Get Serious About SOA Governance: A Five-Step Action Plan for Architects
INTRODUCTION Whether your organization's service-oriented architecture (SOA) has 50 services being used by one customer, or 50 customers using one service, you need SOA governance; increased business agility depends on it. SOA governance provides the ability to quickly and continuously translate and transmit business strategy and requirements into the processes, policies, and controls that will guide the evolution of your infrastructure and your enterprise. Failure to provide effective SOA governance exposes your organization to serious risks resulting from . Insufficient adoption of services . Fragmented approaches to SOA . Resources wasted on services that can't be reused . Rampant and redundant service creation across siloed SOA initiatives . Ineffective communication of priorities and best practices . Cultural resistance to change For any organization that has adopted SOA as its primary approach to enterprise Effective governance ensures that architecture, governance becomes the conduit that connects and aligns corporate, communication, collaboration, and the IT, and business unit objectives. For these organizations, effective governance two-way flow of information keep SOA initiatives and investments inextricably ensures that communication, collaboration, and the two-way flow of information connected to the enterprise to deliver keep SOA initiatives and investments inextricably connected to the enterprise to sustainable business value. deliver sustainable business value.
Critical Role of the Architect The success of a governance initiative rests on the shoulders of the architect, and you'll need to play several roles, including strategist, communicator, and enforcer. This white paper describes five key practices to take into consideration as you help your organization achieve SOA success. There's more to SOA governance than these five practices, but they provide a solid foundation upon which to grow and extend your SOA capabilities.
Get Serious About SOA Governance: A Five-Step Action Plan for Architects Page 2 STEP 1-TRANSLATE THE VISION Your job is to translate executive vision into corporate strategy by building a reference architecture and implementation road map to achieve your business goals. This process flow should include checkpoints and controls to ensure governance requirements are met at each stage of the implementation process. It is essential to communicate that strategy to the various stakeholders through guidelines and policies that extend into the lifecycle. Make sure that everything from high-level metrics to detailed best practices is accessible to everyone-from executive to developer. Implement processes and technologies to break down barriers and establish a collaborative environment. SOA is a dynamic, more-organic environment. Continuous, closed-loop communication is important for the ongoing refinement of your strategy and road map.
STEP 2-SET AND ENFORCE A STRATEGY Support your strategy by creating standards, policies, and process gates to ensure Collaborate with your team, publishing projects meet requirements before they are funded. Collaborate with your team, best practices in a central repository along with the appropriate standards. publishing best practices in a central repository along with the appropriate standards. You also need to provide guidelines for prioritizing service requests; for example, a service that could be used by multiple applications should have priority over one that can only be reused once or twice. Reward compliance with funding; you might, for example, use the calculated reuse percentage as a basis for rewarding achievement. Also, if developers aren't following a certain policy, find out why, and share information with them to determine if the policy is applicable.
This illustrates various sample checkpoints and controls that support governance processes.
STEP 3-ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN SOA VISIBILITY Because SOAs are dynamic, you'll need continuous information about what's going You'll need an automated and structured on at runtime to avoid so-called ivory-tower syndrome and to make good decisions. tool for SOA monitoring, enforcement, traceability, and compliance. Wit... [download for more]
