Definition:-
Governance is the application of controls to
processes that change corporate assets, with a view to ensuring that those
assets comply with (or move towards compliance with) with a set of corporate
goals
Governance Needs
Balance:-
Given the necessary overheads of governance, a
balance needs to be struck between too much governance (which will cripple
processes), and too little governance (which will result in chaos).
Governance Needs A
Raison D’être:-
Governance only makes sense against a backdrop of
well-defined drivers and goals. For example, an organisation may decide to
standardise on a particular architecture, or tool set, for reasons of reduced
total cost of ownership. Governance would be used to drive or direct changes to
current assets in compliance with these goals.
Governance Must Be
Effective:-
Effective governance will impose light-weight,
thorough and widely-accepted controls around the changes being applied to those
assets. Governance that is seen as pointless, or a hindrance to progress, will
be resisted and ineffective.
Governance Needs A
Yardstick:-
Governance needs to be applied with respect to a set
of corporate goals that are defined in terms of concrete technology standards
and architectural blueprints. For
example:
·
Technology registry
detailing emerging, preferred, and deprecated technologies for different
subject areas
·
Technology
blueprints, e.g. LAN topology
·
Architecture
blueprint, e.g. service, messaging, security, email, scheduling, monitoring
architecture
·
Application
Architecture blueprints, e.g. REST web service architecture (structure and
technologies used)
Standards and blueprints have the added benefit of
defining clearly and explicitly “how we do things”.
The Open Group have produced an excellent guide to SOA governance, from which the following principles have been taken:
- SOA governance must promote the alignment of business and IT
- Conform to organization's governance
- An SOA Reference Architecture is required
- Provider & consumer contracts
- Service metadata
- Identified governance stakeholders
- Tailor SOA governance processes
- Automate SOA governance processes
- Implement funding model