A Spoonful of Governance for SOA

Governance is one of those words that can strike fear into the heart of a software architect. Visions of endless meetings and committee reviews immediately give the developer that queasy feeling in the pit of their stomach. Process and overhead guarantee a slow down in an already tight project plan and cause developers to spend more time drawing diagrams and writing documents than actually writing code. SOA governance ensures that the developer's SOA has them. Governance doesn't have to be a bad word. In fact, he may already have some of the pieces in place for his SOA governance plan and not even know it. If the developer has spent any time designing software, he might have already solved some of the issues.