Joe McKendrick highlights a survey completed by Bob Rhubart, in his most recent blog. Bob Rhubart published the results of an informal poll that shows that most IT managers and technologists know that governance is critical for SOA, however don't really know when you should use it. I'm working from Joe's post, since I think his insights are pretty good here.

"Governance is not here yet. Only 15% actually had a governance program up and running. Sixty-four percent were still in the 'planning/research' stage.

Three percent, in fact, declared that their SOA was flourishing without SOA. Fifty-seven percent said governance was critical, and SOA will fail without it.

The other 40% said that governance is 'somewhat' important to SOA, which is what had Bob wondering. Where's the 'tipping point' that makes it 'important'? He wonders if governance only makes a difference — and is worth the trouble — when SOA efforts hit a certain number of services, or a certain number of service consumers. 'Or are they waiting until the need becomes obvious? When they reach that point, will they regret waiting?'"

<Set Ranting On>

Once again we are focused too much on a single notion, rather than the holistic value of the architecture. It goes to the continued thirst for the "cool technology," and not taking an architectural approach. The fact of the matter is that when I walk into a SOA project, and the discussion goes quickly towards "what SOA governance" and not "why SOA governance" I know right away that the project is in deep trouble.

<Set Ranting Off>

The clear path that most are taking is to build the services, and then layer in the SOA governance technology without a clear understanding of what they will do with those services. There is typically no architectural notion of how to place volatility into a domain to facilitate agility. SOA governance, at the end of the day, is good infrastructure for SOA (behavior and technology). SOA governance should be more of a best practice than anything else, and a small part of a more holistic solution. No single technology will allow you to win the game here, trust me.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on February 24, 2008 06:37 AM