+1. To rephrase, lack of governance (i.e., the complete process) severely impedes SOA.
Jeff asked me this question privately last week. Today he asked me whether 'business & I.T. alignment' is killing SOA. My response to him was: I think lack of understanding of what it really takes to do SOA is what kills SOA. To fully deliver the returns promised by SOA, it needs to be part of a much larger initiative to transform IT. The following perspectives will significantly limit the potential return on investment: - Technology-centric effort - Project-centric effort - Integration-focused effort Characteristics that facilitate success: - Investment in social capital, i.e. learn to speak "business" and establish trust - Enterprise-wide perspective - Prioritization of projects based on desired business outcomes - Focus on improving data quality and process optimization - Major changes to the IT department, e.g., new CIO, reorganization, adoption of agile Anne p.s. (this was not part of my original response to Jeff) The major changes to the IT department aren't essential, but they cause a massive shake-up that typically sparks a significant change in the attitude of the IT staff -- both in the way they interact with each other and the way they interact with people in other groups. It's the change in attitude that facilitates success On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 4:50 PM, Michael Poulin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Looks like we have to define vocabulary before getting into this discussion. > > Following TOGAF and some SOA related publications: > - Governance is a process of creation policies and procedures > - Management is the means that implements governance by enforcing and > controlling compliance with policies and procedures > > One of the forms of procedures is architectural/design reviews conducted by > Architectural organizations at corporate/enterprise level, at LOb and BU > levels. Since SOA is growing into enterprise level, SOA Governance becomes a > part of EA Governance. > > "people with diverse skills and background" may be leveraged by 1) > education; 2)direct management; 3)constant control > > We should not mix management problems and process (escalation and conflict > resolution) with governance. I would recommend to look into ITIL v.3 to see > how IT services (operations) are now viewed in the manner very similar (but > not the same) to SO governance. > > - Michael > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Yogish Pai <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 7:38:27 PM > Subject: Re: [service-orientated-architecture] Is Governance Killing SOA? > > Yes! Governance is hampering SOA (I would not say that it is killing SOA) > and has got nothing to do with technology, products or standards. > > It is all about how to leverage people with diverse skills and background, > alignment and consistency between various governance processes (Corporate, > IT, EA, SOA, etc) and politics (escalation process, conflict resolutions, > who makes what decision, etc.). > > Based on my limited observation, I am yet to see a clearly defined approach > by the leadership team to deal with each of these issues. Yes! these topics > need to be clearly defined and communicated out to the enterprise. > > - Yogish > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: JP Morgenthal <morgenthaljp@ avorcor.com> > To: service-orientated- architecture@ yahoogroups. com > Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 10:49:55 AM > Subject: Re: [service-orientated -architecture] Is Governance Killing SOA? > > In my experience, a conceptual understanding of what is a service > is killing SOA. I'd like to believe after the last 14 years that > I have built a good experience base for design of services (that > includes CORBA). I design nice service-oriented boundaries and > software engineers look at it and just go straight for the > tightly-coupled modeled and then tell me, "no, it's not > tightly-coupled because it's based on an interface." > > Interface-based design and design-by-contract are not > one-in-the-same, but as long as a majority of individuals > implementing SOA don't understand this delicate delineation, SOA > will suffer. Clearly, for many software engineers, they see a > service as a reusable component, while for many of us that have > been at this game awhile, we see a service as a more declarative > entity oriented strongly toward a business bent. > > Having to share SOA design with engineers that don't get it has > consistently led to a failure to move forward with the SOA design > in favor of a modified component-oriented design. Hence, failed > SOA. > > On Thu Jul 17 11:49:20 CDT 2008, jeffrschneider > <jeffrschneider@ hotmail.com> wrote: > >> >> >> >> Is governance killing SOA? >> >> >> >> Thanks, >> Jeff Schneider >> >> >> > >
