A posting in Joe McKendrick's SOA in Action blog, and subsequently covered by my colleague Bob Rhubart, quotes Forrester's Larry Fulton about taking an iterative approach to SOA Governance, much the same way SOA projects have been approached. Specifically, the blog quotes Larry as saying
The big pitfall to avoid is building out a lot more governance than you need given where you are in your SOA journey.
One of the most common challenges to SOA Governance success is adoption of the governance process. Taking a big bang approach will undoubtedly lead to low adoption, as you tend to put too many control mechanisms on a culture not quite ready to accept them.
Larry is correct, an iterative approach to governance is the right way to go. Start with your most immediate concern and grow from there. As your SOA expands, new challenges and circumstances will present themselves, so your governance program needs to evolve as your SOA evolves. As one customer I recently spoke to put it, a key to governance success is knowing ahead of time that you're going to have to reinvent your governance program as your understanding and maturity of SOA progresses. Don't let one evolve without the other.
One word of caution about this though. Don't be too tactical. You want to address your immediate concerns, but not without an understanding of the longer term goals and objectives. Doing so will help ensure your governance program can evolve with your SOA.
Read Joe's entire post: ebizQ Presents Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in Action Virtual Conference Blog
