Why have so many hybrid vehicles been registered in the state of California in the last 12 months? Is it the more than $1500 in federal tax credits given to hybrid owners, or the luxury of cruising down the high-occupancy vehicle lanes solo during commute hours? Or is it that Californians are becoming more environmentally aware? Whatever the true reason, the reality is that policies were put into place to encourage desirable behavior—the purchase of low-consumption vehicles. This is an example of governance: when policies are put into place to encourage desirable outcomes.

Some people use SOA governance to mean service lifecycle governance—that is, governing the lifecycle of services from creation through deployment. Others take it to mean applying runtime policies to services. But is there more to SOA governance than this? Shouldn’t governance with SOA ultimately be about delivering on your business and SOA objectives? Finally, without a common understanding of what governance means, are organizations that adopt SOA simply setting themselves up for failure?

This article outlines a framework for governance as it specifically relates to SOA, and introduces our Six Steps to Successful SOA Governance model. Armed with this model, architects and IT managers with SOA responsibility will have the knowledge and framework they need to help ensure SOA success.