Recent acquisitions by Mercury Interactive and Progress Software have spawned quite a bit of industry talk regarding SOA governance. However, for the many businesses just starting an SOA initiative the questions are very basic. What is SOA governance? When should we implement governance? What is the best approach to governing the mounting number of services?
What?
SOA governance gives organizations the ability to track the life of each service from architectural inception, through design and development, and finally into its deployment environment. Governance involves the application of organizational mandates, best practices, and guidelines to IT projects, usually through a set of well-defined review checkpoints (e.g., requirements complete, design complete, pre-deployment) identified as part of the organization's software development lifecycle (SDLC). Review checkpoints typically include both automated validations and manual role-based reviews by various personnel (e.g., architects, business analysts, security, QA) throughout the development lifecycle.
