Posts Tagged ‘SOA Governance’
Avoid Just-In-Time Governance
I just read David Linthicum’s “Governance Monday” post, Can SOA governance technology be distracting? In it, he discussed some of his conversation with Anne Thomas Manes of The Burton Group. He states that SOA governance technology can “muddy up the water in the early stages” of the effort. I certainly agree with this. These technologies can be complicated, especially when striving for a highly integrated, automated approach. There is a risk that the reason for using the technology can be forgotten as the focus shifts toward getting the technology implemented.
There is another question I would like to address: can governance itself be distracting? While Dave covered the technology angle, what about the governance processes? I did an interview with Loraine Lawson of IT Business Edge last week, and in that interview, I stressed that organizations must avoid starting too late with their governance efforts. If you are adopting SOA to change the way you approach solution development, you need to make the desired behavior known early and often. If you wait until a team “misbehaves” before making them aware of the correct behavior, it will create animosity. If you wait until the situation is critical before embarking on the change associated with SOA, you’ll be forced to take a heavy-handed approach, much as world governments were forced to take heavy-handed actions with current financial crisis. It was necessary, but no one is happy about it.
Want to know more? Check out my book, SOA Governance.
Should Governance Books be Dense?
This was too good not to share. Word of my new book on SOA Governance made its way to the Yahoo SOA group this week and Steve Jones had a great comment:
Now as it’s a governance book it should be big, it should be heavy and you should be able to hit people with it. I’m a bit concerned that this one looks a bit fragile and quite frankly a PDF goes against the whole principle of Governance enforcement.
Wait…I’m meant to READ the things?
Yes, the book is paperback, and at just over 200 pages, it won’t do much damage if you beat people over the head with it. Thanks for the laugh, Steve!
