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Enterprise SOA Governance
Service Oversight, Decision Making, Policy Setting, Administration & Stewardship

“SOA done right gives people greater power and flexibility, and as a result, an increased risk that they’re really going to muck things up.”…Jason Bloomberg, ZapThink

Enterprise SOA Governance shows you how to do SOA right. In this one-day seminar, you will learn how to design, build and operate an effective governance framework for creating, communicating and enforcing corporate Web service policies throughout the enterprise SOA.

Will you govern your SOA, or will your SOA govern you?

SOA governance doesn’t make operational decisions, but rather makes policies by deciding what decisions must be made, who should make them and how to make them.  In a shared services environment like an Enterprise SOA, no governance or dysfunctional governance, or even a bad governance policy, can have severe and negative impacts across the enterprise.

Enterprise SOA Governance focuses on showing you how to create the processes and policies that establish and manage shared Web services.  As organizations start to employ Web services via an enterprise SOA, they move from “silo to shared”.  Ownership of the underlying business process transfers from a single business area and “externalizes” into an enterprise responsibility.  SOA governance directs and coordinates the processes needed to accept and exercise the responsibility for shared Web Services on behalf of all of the stake-holders.

What makes SOA governance so critical?

SOA Governance provides the core guidance and support framework that directs the use of both the SOA itself and the business applications that deploy on the SOA.  Like any strategy for managing enterprise-scale business processes and initiatives, SOA governance demands a balanced approach to a set of complex interdisciplinary components.

Enterprise SOA Governance introduces and explains the key technology, methodology and sociology components utilized throughout the SOA lifecycle.

• Technology: Registry, Repository, WS-* protocols, ESB & other policy execution patterns

• Methodology

  • Web Service Identification, Analysis, Construction, Testing, Extension/Enhancement

  • Decision Making, Policy Creation, Management, Administration & Enforcement

  • Service Monitoring, Measurement, Management, Administration

• Sociology

  • Organization: Board of Governors, Stewards/Managers/Administrators

  • Culture & Politics: Shared Authority & Control, Collaboration, Conflict Resolution

Enterprise SOA Governance is available in two versions:

• Standard one-day seminar…private or public

• Tailored 2-3 day private workshop that includes the standard seminar content, plus extended solution sessions throughout the course that will jump-start your SOA Governance program

What You Will Learn

How SOA Governance empowers Enterprise SOA…

• How do you create shared service chains of responsibility, authority & communication?

• What governance decisions do you need to make to automate policies and business rules?

• How do you manage shared service measurement, policy and control mechanisms?

• How does governance enable SOA by managing each aspect of the SOA life-cycle?

How SOA Governance helps to answer critical Web service sharing questions…

• What services are available?

• Who can use them?

• What’s their reliability?

• How do you add a new feature?

• What happens if the service changes?

• What if you need the service to work differently than other service users?

How SOA Governance provides a framework for deploying reusable shared services…

• Who pays for the design, development and maintenance of shared Web services?

• How can you implement effective reuse?

• How can you achieve agreement on service functionality & avoid custom service silos?

• How can you get all stakeholders to work together, or at least not contradict each other?

• How do you negotiate shared service SLAs?

How SOA Governance impacts organization structure and culture…

• How do you evolve from “silo to shared”?

• What organization bodies do you need to govern cross-function business processes?

• What does it take to create and manage a SOA Center of Excellence (COE) stewardship?

• How does organizing for SOA impact traditional IT roles and structures?

How SOA Governance technologies provide an interoperability infrastructure…

• What’s the value of creating and communicating a reference architecture for your SOAs?

• What are the key WS-* governance protocols and how can you implement them?

• How do registries, repositories and directories work together throughout the SOA lifecycle?

• How can you use WSM tools to monitor and manage your operational SOA environment?

Seminar Outline

Part 1: The Business Case…What is SOA Governance and what do we need it to do?

• Currency conversion case study simulation

• SOA Governance functions and roles

  • Service responsibility, authority and decision making

  • Service stewardship, measurement and management

• SOA Governance models…Internal and External

  • What decisions must you make?

  • What policies must you set?

  • Who will make decisions and set policy?

  • How will you make decisions and set policies?

  • How will you define and measure success?

• What’s different about SOA Governance?

  • Nature and impact of shared Web services

  • Service life-cycle

  • Impacts of Web service & policy change, extension and enhancement

• SOA Governance as an Agility Strategy & Enabler…Finding the Balance

  • Process Speed: Quick & Dirty vs. Obsessive Bureaucracy

  • Policy Flexibility: Excessively Rigid vs. Overly Accommodating

• SOA Governance Lifecycle

  • Plan…What do you need to govern?

  • Define…What approaches will you take?

  • Enable…How will you deploy structures, technical infrastructure and policies?

  • Measure…How will you monitor and manage operations and policy compliance?

• SOA Governance Architecture

  • Methodology: Policy establishment & maintenance processes & practices

  • Sociology: Organization and culture

  • Technology: Reference Architecture, Standards, Platforms & Tools

Part 2: Methodology…SOA Governance Processes & Practices

• Service Definition & Design Policies

  • Business Process Examination, Modeling & Analysis

  • Candidate Identification, Scoping & Documentation

• Service Candidate Evaluation Policies

  • Organizational Feasibility

  • Technical Feasibility

• Service Life Cycle Policies

  • Development

  • Testing

  • Active Utilization

  • Retirement

• Versioning Policies…Services & Policies

  • Change & Correction

  • Enhancement & Extension

  • Migration

• Canonical Data Model Policies

  • Integrating Data between and among Requesters & Service Providers

  • Standardizing Message Payload Content & Format

• Service Security Policies

  • Service & Operation Authorization

  • Requestor & Service Provider Identity

  • Message Encryption

Part 3: Sociology… SOA Governance Organizations & Culture

• Congruence with existing culture & practices

  • Corporate Governance & IT Governance

  • Governance of existing shared enterprise services…HR, Accounting & Finance

  • Service-Level Agreements (SLAs)

  • Cross-boundary arrangements…Joint projects & initiatives

  • Funding issues…Services vs. Application Projects

  • Transparency…Decision-making and policy process openness and communication

• Partnerships

  • Service providers & service consumers

  • Business area stakeholders & IT

• Service Governance via a Stakeholder Board of Governors

  • Membership

  • Stakeholder identification via CRUD

  • Leadership options…Internal vs. external/independent

  • Voting options…1 person-1 vote vs. proportional representation

  • Service funding…Who pays for shared services?

  • IT participation…Does IT get a vote? Does IT get a veto?

• Service Stewardship via a SOA Center of Excellence (COE)

  • Organizational placement options…In or outside of IT

  • Fit with existing structures…Silo vs. shared conflicts

  • Organizational challenges

    • Who pays for management & administration?

    • Staff compensation

    • Staff development & career path

Part 4: Technology… SOA Reference Architecture, Framework, Platforms & Tools

• Interoperability Framework… SOA Reference Architecture Standards & Protocols

  • OASIS WS-* and Other Key Initiatives

  • WS-* Policy Approach…WS-Policy, WS-Security, WS-Compensation, etc.

  • UDDI and other discovery, identification, authentication & authorization issues

  • Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)

• Administration & Management Environment…Registries, Repositories & Directories

  • Service description & metadata creation, management & storage

  • Service discovery

  • Service policy creation, management & storage

• Web Service Management (WSM)…Monitors, Brokers & the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

  • Workflow runtime execution

    • Orchestration, Choreography & Coordination

    • BPEL and other options

  • Workflow & service monitoring & management

    • Operational integrity reporting…Are services up & running?

    • Service usage monitoring…What requestors use which services?

    • Audit & logging…What are the service usage patterns & details?

    • SLA compliance…How well do services meet their performance goals?

    • Policy & compensation supervision…Are the rules being followed?

• Commercial Products…Overview, Strategies & Approaches

  • Comprehensive suites embedded in J2EE Application Servers

  • The Microsoft approach

  • Independent options