SOA Governance is the key to a successful adoption of Service-Oriented Architecture. It is the process of establishing a desired outcome for your efforts, and then leveraging people, policies, and processes to make that outcome a reality. This includes technical policies and standards that guide your design-time activities, policies and processes that impact your project selection and funding decisions, and finally run-time policies that impact your operational management activities. The adoption of Service-Oriented Architecture is intended to improve the efficiency and productivity of your company, and your SOA governance efforts are critical in achieving your goals in quality, consistency, predictability, change management, and interdependencies of services.

This book will help you to understand what requirements you will need to introduce SOA Governance into your company. Running through the people, policies, and processes needed for such an effort, this book will help you to realize the steps that you need to take in order to improve your company's business process quickly and efficiently.

By following a fictional company's implementation of SOA Governance from the beginning to its successful end, this book will show you the ups and downs of the process. You will learn how to plan SOA governance according to your company's needs, so that you can avoid the possible pitfalls that are highlighted through the narrative. Learn about SOA Governance to work your way towards SOA success.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 8 Ratings

Fictional Advasco company - 2009-02-10
Reviewer Rating:
This is the worst SOA book I have ever read. It contains mostly the fictional dialog of people working for a fictional Advasco Company and has little to do with "SOA Governance" as indicated in the title of the book. The book starts off with the dialog of Andrea - the CIO of Advasco, Spencer - an Enterprise Architect, Elena - the Chief Architect, Maria - the Service Manager and other people like Ryan. Following is a quote from the Preface page.

"In each chapter, you will hear a portion of their journey on the path to SOA adoption." Is SOA adoption same as SOA Governance?

The book also talks about Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). However, there is no detail governance about it.

This book is a waste of money and time. Books from Thomas Erl are one of the best in regard to SOA.

Must Read, I'll Explain Why - 2008-11-12
Reviewer Rating:
A brief background on my credentials - I'm with Progress Software, a company that provides software products to companies to help with their SOA needs (among other things). You can read more about my, and my thoughts on these topics at my blog at [...] (make sure to look at my posts, it's a team blog).

That said, I've been following Todd on twitter and a regular reader of his blog for some time. Can't say I always agree with his opinions, and was curious to see how his thoughts evolved into a book on the topic. The result, I must say taught me a few things (which is always a pleasure).

First, I'll point out, it's an easy read. He tells a story, which in addition to being easy to read, importantly makes it easy to remember. And, his story focuses on what's really important - the results. And he does this from the perspective of an IT organization. I think this is a critical perspective, because most IT organizations may speak the "business language" but few, in my experience in over 30 countries, actually deliver.

Why? Well, from this book it's a few simple take-aways:
1. Long term "product-like" ownership of IT assets, vs short-term focus on delivering IT projects
2. Communication and education is as (or more) important than enforcement
3. IT leadership and consistency through the IT organization gives IT more credibility than ever before, significantly improving the likelihood of success, and of surviving set-backs

Let's explore those key take-aways a bit more.

In Todd's fictional company, the perspective of long-term ownership vs. short-term project focus enables ownership over time, and allows Advasco (his fictional company) to build momentum around shared IT assets. Todd also tells a story of how the right leadership can really affect change, again by building momentum over time within the organization's people and processes. It's a story I can both relate to, and as a technology-bigot wish were more common. I believe the benefits of technology are not fully explored at most companies. I think Todd gives us a clear vision of how we can raise the efficiency of IT -- and, it's not by buying more stuff. It's by working smarter.

Early on, the book discusses the importance of communication and education equally to enforcement. Sounds obvious, but, most companies I know spend much more time/effort on enforcement, and when they do communicate, do so at the wrong level.

I found it great, that a book on SOA didn't talk about technology details much. I was afraid I'd be hard pressed to read it all the way through. The last thing I wanted to read was another book on decoupling, or SOA security threats, or the need for a registry, repository, or whatever other product some vendor wants to sell.

I did disagree somewhat with the explanations of service management and the use/importance of a registry and/or repository, but they played a very small part of the book, and I can admit to my own vendor-based biases in that opinion. I tend to be in the minority in my opinions in these areas.

I'll finish with two last points. My favorite, on the bottom of page 55, talked about establishing goals that can be measured. That one subject, including implementation, could probably be a book on it's own!

And, some food for thought... read the section on establishing a center of excellence. I'd be really interesting to have some followup from the author and others on how to determine the ROI for the center of excellence, or otherwise justify the investment. How to allocate costs of the "process change" across projects, to help fund the initial SOA establishment. I think answers to these questions will bring even more reality to a very unique, and practically important book for anyone embarking on an enterprise SOA initiative.

Pragmatic book about SOA Governance. - 2009-04-21
Reviewer Rating:
A brief background on my credentials - I'm with Interway , a company that provides software products to companies to help with their SOA needs (among other things).

SOA Governance book (http://www.interway.sk/en/technologies/service-oriented-architecture-soa/resource-center/soa-governance.html) was good introduction into governance topic and how governance is and has to be connected into Service Oriented Architecture.

Mr. Todd Biske (http://www.biske.com/blog/), author of the book, showed the evolution of the SOA and SAO governance on the virtual company "Advasco". He showed how the company was driven for "SOA thinking" and how and why company needed SOA governance. Having virtual actors as employees of the company we could feel the problematic when reading dialogs of them. It was very helpful while reading such dialogs, so the reader could imagine from practical perspective what is the problem and how problem should be understood and resolved. It's easy to remember the SOA governance concepts from this book because it shows life problems on virtual company "Advasco".

The governance exists always, at least some kind of, but having effective governance and understand it is the goal of this book. The book showed and explained the SOA governance from its basic. The book is much suggested when starting with SOA governance. It's suggested for all personnel who need to have feeling and understand governance from it's concept. It is not detailed technical technology overview about governance technologies. But instead it shows relations, timeframes, and aspects of SOA governance from all perspective within enterprise. Especially "Chapter 8, Establishing SOA Governance at Your Organization" is some kind of agnostic references for SOA governance regardless any vendor, technology, enterprise type.

This book is a must-have for all IT managers, architects, PMs and business analysts dealing with SOA issues, be they implementation, governance, or both. I also highly recommend this book for those who are starting or facing IT governance issues in general, even if they aren't contemplating or building-out an SOA at present - the governance principles, techniques, and advice Todd gives apply to much more than SOA.

This book will definitely meet expectation for readers looking for understanding SAO governance concepts and principles. This book is not about hardly reading big topic and hardly consuming it. But Mr. Toad Biske successfully separated concerns in this book into small parts so reader will not get bored or tired with many theoretic structures. On above 200 pages reader get very familiar with SOA governance concepts. It does not go too deep into specific problem but instead it shows overall picture.

good gov book - 2009-02-06
Reviewer Rating:
i like the approach adn the overall book layout

a good book that can help understand basic governance concepts

for the text this book gets 5 stars

for the cover 1 star

Todd nailed it... - 2008-11-14
Reviewer Rating:
Writing a book on SOA Governance is risky business. The concepts around SOA governance are changing quickly, the technology is defining SOA governance in the marketplace, and the hype has created a noise level that's counterproductive.

What was needed is a pragmatic and real world approach to SOA governance focusing on what matters: the people and the processes. This book is just that.

Todd's ability to drive through the hype, and the noise, and get to the essence of the topic is the value of this book. His pragmatic approach to SOA governance defines both the value of the concept, and the approaches required to get SOA governance working within your enterprise.

In short, he nailed it. If you're doing SOA, this is the best money you'll spend. By this book now.

Dave Linthicum

InfoWorld Real World SOA Blogger
SOA Report Podcaster

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