IASA

Key Considerations for SOA Governance – Part 2

In the previous post in the series, we have explored the key considerations around the context, objectives and parameters of the SOA governance. This part of the series addresses the key components of SOA governance such as the timing of the governance and the elements which will be governed such as software / services aspects and the hardware / technology aspects which will be deployed during the SOA program implementation.

The timing of SOA governance

Understanding the timing of governance application is key to define the key components of SOA governance. Broadly speaking there are three instances where SOA governance can be applied; during the design time where the services will be identified, modelled and designed; during the development time where the modelled services will be developed and during the run-time or during operations where the developed and tested services are deployed in production. Will every organisation which embarks of SOA program or projects need governance during all three phases? Not necessarily, it depends on the size, scope and complexity of particular SOA program at hand. But the SOA governance mechanism certainly needs to identify and plan ahead for potential implementation around these three phases.

Soft components of governance – models, schemas, services

From the software design perspective the most obvious artefacts which are required to be governed are the business and technical services which are at the heart of any SOA implementation project. But in addition to these, the underlying process models, policies, contracts which bind services together and fundamental message and data schemas may also need to be covered by the SOA governance mechanism. For example; while the deployed services are working well, it may still be necessary to define and manage a formal change and configuration management mechanism around the constituent schemas and process models as very often an organisation would want to introduce new features or changes to deployed services as the business demand changes.

Hard components of governance - Tools and Technologies

There are broadly speaking four categories of tools and technologies which are key components of SOA implementation, First: the registries and repositories which help maintain the library of designed and deployed services. Second: the middleware and/or Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) technologies which help with orchestration of services. Third: the gateway or messaging mechanisms which help communicate with external environments to exchange messages with partners, customers, vendor, suppliers etc. And finally the management and monitoring tools which manages the aspects of service management, metering, performance management and monitoring. The assumption here is that, the infrastructure choices will not be dictated by the tools rather, the organisation’s data center will have these choices made at an enterprise level and the SOA tools will support most standard data center images. The governance activities around the tools and technologies will range from selection of the right tools and technologies, definition of the right-fit reference architecture, modelling for the services on these technologies and the most suitable configuration during development and during the operations.

Next articles in this series will explore the management aspects of the governance such as roles and responsibilities in governance processes, exception management, KPI and success measurement.

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