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c01_1 07/08/2008 6
oversight on such key issues as executive compensation and performance
and corporate strategy and decision making. The board of directors nor-
mally is comprised of inside and outside directors to ensure all stakehold-
er interests are represented in a balanced fashion. When corporate
governance fails, it is usually because of a lack of objectivity (e.g., board
members appointed by the Chief Executive Officer [CEO] of the organi-
zation, or board membership weighted too heavily toward inside interests
versus external shareholder interests). Most recently, corporate gover-
nance has been in the news due to the stock option backdating scandal.
Corporate governance failed in this case due to a lack of decision trans-
parency, which enabled a few executives to unilaterally or multilaterally
enrich themselves by backdating stock option agreements. In the general
sense, any governance will fail if stakeholders of critical decisions are not
engaged in the processes of governance. This is why governance is first
and foremost about engagement of critical stakeholders in key decisions
of an organization.
INTRODUCTION TO ENTERPRISE SOA GOVERNANCE
What is enterprise SOA governance? SOA governance is the process of en-
suring all business and IT stakeholders’ interests are served by the planning,
funding, and execution of an enterprise SOA initiative. One of the early pio-
neers of SOA governance is the company WebLayers, located in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. WebLayers defines SOA governance as follows:
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SOA governance is the ability to ensure that all of the independent
(SOA) efforts (whether in the design, development, deployment,
or operations of a service) come together to meet enterprise
requirements.
WebLayers developed the concept of a policy-driven SOA governance
approach where in effect SOA governance is predicated on developing, for-
malizing, and enforcing a body of SOA policies that ensure conformance to
enterprise SOA business and technology goals. In my opinion, this whitepa-
per paved the way for the industry to understand the scope, breadth, and
criticality of policies in a SOA governance framework.
However, SOA governance must be approached from an enterprise per-
spective and from a comprehensive and holistic viewpoint. An enterprise
approach to SOA governance offers a more robust model than focusing
narrowly on SOA governance. While explicitly defined SOA policies are
essential to formalize and encode the enterprise requirements for SOA
6 THE SOA GOVERNANCE IMPERATIVE