In a previous article (see http://www.esj.com/news/article.aspx?EditorialsID=2149) I discussed why governance is necessary for the successful implementation of SOA-based application development. New technologies and techniques make developers a bit giddy. We tend to forget the lessons of the past and forget also, in our rush to adopt the new and the interesting, that our disciplines need to follow us forward as well.

While governance is necessary for all successful software development projects, not all governance is the same. You still need rigor and discipline, but what has worked in the past will need to be modified to account for the new way SOA-based software is developed. While most current thinking about SOA governance addresses running applications, effective governance should reach all the way back to project inception, move through the development phase, and continue into production. Most importantly and most often neglected, SOA governance must extend to the consumption side of SOA.