Is there a better way to say SOA governance? That is the question that Michael Meehan had in Tech Target article you can find here.

"Yet let's be honest, the term 'SOA governance' sucks. It reeks of someone else telling you what to do, hectoring you over every little detail of a project. It sounds about as desirable as a colonoscopy with an IMAX camera.

It's a particularly sticky term here in the U.S.A. We don't like a lot of governance. In fact, we get uppity when we think we've been placed under the yoke of too much governance. We'll dump your tea in the harbor when that happens. In fact, you can be sure many project teams have formed some unprintable thoughts about governance without representation."

The idea is pretty sound (not the IMAX camera). In the USA we don't like architectural control, specifically any sort of behavior modification or discipline. It's a cultural thing, but at the root of how many enterprises have a dysfunctional and inefficient architecture. The trick is will people do governance, and will they understand it. I think it's pretty simple if you ask me, it's just a matter of planning and control.

"The rub comes in how to sum up all of the things that exist under the heading of SOA governance in a term that doesn't cause automatic resentment. As ZapThink's David Linthicum noted recently, SOA governance encompasses a lot of import facets in application development and management. We need to call it something. I've heard 'productivity' and 'business value' tossed around as replacement terms, but those still sound a bit too buzzwordy."

How about just a "good idea?"

Posted by Dave Linthicum on February 12, 2008 11:21 AM