Three Keys to Effective

SOA Governance
Augmenting performance by adapting today’s IT
governance structures to SOA’s distinct demands

Point of View
Service-oriented architecture
is clearly the gateway to step
improvements in IT solution
development, but it requires
more than just a new
approach to how IT works
with business users. It calls
for a radically different
approach to IT governance.
Accenture observes that while most
leading companies’ IT organizations
are well on the way to adopting
service-oriented architecture (SOA)
capabilities, many find their progress
slowed by big questions about who
now owns the business services—and
who controls them. While there
are plenty of scenarios in which
applications ownership and control is
muddy, the questions are much trickier
when they touch on who is in charge
of and who pays for IT development in
an SOA environment. And those
questions are downright difficult when
they get into who foots the bill for
ongoing changes and maintenance.
When IT takes a services perspective,
clarity of ownership becomes very
cloudy. A high-level business service
will combine component services and
multiple business processes that span
several different systems and
applications. So how does IT know it is
exposing the right services for a given
business process—and that those
services are documented, managed
and maintained properly? At the same
time, multiple departments and
functions may benefit from the
service. Everyone—and therefore no
one—may own the actual business
service that IT is supporting.
IT leaders are learning that if they are
to achieve high performance with an
SOA strategy and implementation,
they must update and extend their IT
governance structures so they provide
guidance for the development and
maintenance needs unique to SOA.
SOA governance supports more
efficient management of the overall
SOA journey. Just as important, such
governance supports better ways of
funding, managing and operating the
IT organization in support of SOA
implementation.
Accenture’s experience shows that
organizations that adopt an SOA
governance discipline increase their
efficiency, improve their business
responsiveness and realize their
SOA business case sooner—and
with less risk.
How SOA affects the
IT organization
Since SOA does not replace existing
technologies and application systems,
it requires that all the traditional IT
governance systems are in place.
But what specific aspects of SOA
encourage changes to traditional IT
governance? Several factors stand out:
Impact on ownership of business
functionality.
In a traditional IT environment,
enterprise applications are typically
owned and funded by specific business
units. A unit or department assigns a
contact person who provides a single
point of contact for IT to help manage
development. That person helps the IT
organization understand the particular
business requirements, translates them
into applications and service
requirements and then works within
the IT organization to deliver against
the approved plan. But in an SOA
environment, new questions of
ownership and accountability make IT
governance much less straightforward.
Impact on confidentiality, privacy business people have to be
and compliance. technology-savvy. By contrast, SOA
requires closer and more frequent
Service-oriented architecture interaction between the two sides,
introduces new decision-making rights which in turn means that each must
that relate to internal and external know more about the other’s world.
services as well as to the data in the
underlying applications. With SOA
development, internal business Accenture’s experience
processes can be engineered using a
combination of both internal and shows that organizations
external services, meaning that that adopt an SOA
confidential internal Web services
could become exposed externally. governance discipline
The inherent hybrid nature of SOA increase their efficiency,
development demands new levels of IT
governance as legal, privacy and improve their business
contractual issues arise. responsiveness and
Impact on the business-IT realize their SOA
relationship.
business case sooner—
The traditional relationship between
business units and the IT group is best and with less risk.
characterized as an arm’s-length
alliance. The IT department does not
need an in-depth familiarity with the
business units’ processes because the
business side has a designated contact
person to act as translator. Nor do the
Fig. 1: Centralization vs. Decentralization Decision
Communication & Control over
Architecture, Services & Applications
Defined and managed in a centralized way;
Deployed company-wide
Modifying IT governance
To achieve high performance with an SOA strategy, Accenture
recommends that organizations make three key changes to their
traditional approaches to IT governance.
1.
Establish a service
management program
SOA requires a unique governance
approach that both centralizes and
decentralizes aspects of control. IT
must increase its control over common
architectures, services and applications
while simultaneously granting the
business units greater autonomy in
developing their business capabilities.
(See Figure 1.)
A key to making such a dual approach
work is to add a service management
program to existing IT governance
structures, which can be implemented
either as a broad program or as a
dedicated board or group. The service
management program then provides
ongoing central management of the
services created from an SOA solution.
The program establishes appropriate
repositories and tools for registering
and describing the services that are
created, modified or retired. These
repositories capture and maintain the
mapping of each business process to
the services used for its orchestration.
Control over Business
Capability Development
Defined and managed in a decentralized way;
Deployed by business units
This new service management group
would also oversee several other
distinctive aspects of SOA development:
Enforce and maintain centralized
technology standards. It is imperative
to have central control of and
communication about technology
standards and specifications because
SOA regularly introduces new, more
fluid, standards and specs. And it
is critical to select platforms with
care and to time their adoption just
as carefully. Without such control, a
change in standards down the road
can be costly—to the point of driving
projects over budget. Also, because
SOA can be implemented on existing
technologies, governance oversight
is required so the alternate use of
existing technology is as controlled
as possible.
Lay down a common architecture.
Successful SOA governance involves
ensuring that services in the portfolio
adhere to architectural guidelines and
are registered in the central repository.
By following common architecture
standards and guidelines, the service
management group helps support the
Sphere of IT Control
Sphere of Business Control
ongoing interoperability of the various
services developed and used across
business units. Accenture recommends
adapting the architecture review
board—a body that most organizations
already have in place—so it has the
requisite authority to establish and
enforce SOA technical standards.
The more that “common architecture”
services are created and reused, the
easier and faster it will be to develop
business and IT support for new
business capabilities. The modified
review board should also maintain
a repository that defines how each
service in the services portfolio maps to
its underlying application. And the
board should have the authority to
decommission services that do not
adhere to standard guidelines.
Control and document application
changes. It is important to
communicate and control changes to
applications so the services exposed by
an application aren’t adversely affected.
For example, if a business unit wants to
retire an application that it no longer
needs, the decision to retire must be
made by the services management
board because another business
Fig. 2: Future IT Organization Structure
Business
Innovation
Business
Architecture
End-to-End
Business Processes
Application
Development
SOA
Services
Process
Testing
process may require a service exposed
by that application.
By applying such systems of checks and
balances, an IT organization can bridge
traditional functional silos and help the
company operate as a single integrated
entity. Oversight bodies such as the
services management board make
compelling business sense: they help
to drive consistent business logic across
the organization, and they steer around
problems of interoperability or
inadequate ongoing operations of
services that would undermine the
overall business case for SOA.
2.
Restructure IT for
the SOA environment
The centralization/decentralization
issue at the heart of SOA governance
may require changes to traditional IT
structures. Depending on the exact
circumstances, Accenture may
recommend that an IT department
make these moves:
Create a service-oriented business
architecture function. Such a group
may already exist within an
CIO
Business Process Technical
Orchestration Architecture
Domain #1 Domain #2
organization’s enterprise architecture
team, but we have found it
advantageous to move the business
architecture function out of IT and into
a new business innovation unit. The
new function’s charter is to identify
the company’s core end-to-end
processes and sub-processes, define
them across business units, and, based
on industry and company dynamics,
define new business processes for
competitive differentiation. This
change can help infuse true business
thinking into the business architecture
discipline. Accenture believes that
tomorrow’s IT departments will need to
adopt matrix forms of organization,
with each end-to-end business process
along one dimension and applications
development, service creation, and
process testing along the other
dimension, as illustrated in Figure 2.
Implement new SOA-specific
operating processes. SOA’s
uniquenesses call for several updates
and modifications to existing IT
operating processes. For example,
modified processes are required to
define, request, approve and fulfill
Production
Operations
Process
Domain #n
Management
SOA Service
Management
Application
Management
Infrastructure
Management
services. Service change requests
and service rollout are other areas
for which altered forms of governance
are necessary. And since different
kinds of service-level agreements
are needed in an SOA environment,
service performance management
systems must also be established
and governed.
3.
Enable a new approach
to IT funding
Funding is arguably the most
contentious aspect of a new approach
to IT governance. It is not simple to
create an unambiguous business case
and obtain funding for investments
in technology, methods and tools.
In some cases, credibility is at issue:
absent a compelling business case,
and with a history of ill-defined
results from earlier IT “transformations,”
business units may be reluctant to
allocate resources to SOA initiatives.
 Fig. 3: Economics of SOA versus traditional development
Economics
Fixed Cost
SOA
Break-Even Point
Number of Business Capabilities
The SOA business case itself does
not make things much easier for
those attempting to convince reluctant
business units about SOA’s long-term
value. Although the cost of developing
additional business capabilities
generally drops as more services are
developed, SOA almost always involves
higher upfront funding. (See Figure 3.)
A central governance board can
help here by providing consistent
messaging and communications to
executive decision-makers about the
SOA business case. The point to be
made here is that in traditional
scenarios, development costs continue
to increase linearly with the number
of connections.
A new approach to ongoing funding
is also important. Again, the service
management program or board can
play a valuable role, overseeing
centralized funding for the
architecture, infrastructure and
methodologies in order to provide
coordination and eliminate
redundancy. If an organization decides
to pursue a focused approach to SOA,
it is not necessary to make the entire
Traditional Approach
Economic Advantages
New business capabilities
become economically feasible
investment in a full SOA implement-
ation right away; it can be rolled out
in phases, with lower fixed costs for
each phase absorbed in individual
project budgets. But if the decision
is to push for an enterprise-wide
SOA implementation as quickly
as possible, then it makes sense to
allocate a percentage of the total
IT budget to SOA.
In short, unless an enterprise-wide
approach to funding is mandated, SOA
investments can be decentralized and
absorbed project by project. However,
standards decisions and infrastructure
purchases are best managed centrally
through the IT department.
It’s also vital to set rules for how
funding should be split among
business units that use the same
services. How is a service or process
paid for when it is used by multiple
business units? Who pays for its
ongoing support and maintenance?
What if a service will be reused later
but only one business unit wants it
now? Does that business unit pay any
extra to make it reusable?
In Accenture’s experience, a leading
practice is to establish a joint business
and IT applications portfolio board
and allocate to that group the extra
funding to pay for making services
reusable. In that way, the business
unit creating the original service isn’t
penalized. The service management
program can then control the allocation
of costs and the assignment of work
going forward.
Results of new SOA
governance disciplines
Accenture has helped several leading
companies adopt their IT governance
structures to help them succeed with
an SOA strategy. Here is a snapshot of
high performance delivered as a result:
For almost a decade, a leading
European airline has been pursuing
the benefits of enterprise application
integration and, more recently, SOA
architectures. Many of the airline’s
core systems for reservations, electronic
booking and crew scheduling have
been transformed into sets of services
connected through an enterprise
services bus. In 2004, as the company

began using services across domains,
it became clear that a specific SOA
governance approach was needed. The
solution involved placing an application
service outside the corporate domain
for the airline’s round-the-clock ground
services operations. Accenture helped
design and implement the necessary
SOA governance structures. We
continue to assist with the airline’s
push to build a services library and
expand services reuse within and
outside corporate domains.
Planning for your
SOA success
The issue of appropriate SOA
governance should not be taken
lightly. Although many organizations
may be able to get by with ad hoc
interpretations of their current IT
governance systems, it is Accenture’s
view that such tactics won’t be very
effective for long. We believe that
without defined, agreed-upon SOA
governance mechanisms, there will
soon come a point where services
developed by different groups are
redundant or are not interoperable.
In Accenture’s experience, a leading practice is
to establish a joint business and IT applications
portfolio board and allocate to that group the extra
funding to pay for making services reusable. In that
way, the business unit creating the original service
isn’t penalized. The service management program
can then control the allocation of costs and the
assignment of work going forward.
The business consequences may not lynchpin for delivering greater business
be immediately apparent, but they value, helping create an IT capability
will eventually surface in subtle ways that encourages different sections of
as the SOA implementation gathers the organization to work together more
momentum, perhaps delaying new easily and fostering real organizational
product introductions, disrupting supply flexibility to better meet customers’
chains or hurting customer services. and partners’ changing needs.
As such, Accenture recommends that Proper governance is key to the
organizations examine best practices realization of SOA’s considerable
and success stories as they relate to promise. And SOA provides a powerful
IT governance and organizational blueprint for high performance.
change—both within their The decision to act is yours.
organizations and from other leading
organizations—and build an internal
governance and change library that
can be used as a framework for
examining SOA’s challenges and
opportunities. Proactive steps such as
this will strengthen confidence in SOA
throughout the organization, making
it easier to identify and manage the
projects that can help build a dynamic
and efficient services-based business
and IT environment.
On one level, properly governed SOA
gives business users a strong sense
of autonomy and control. On another
level, effective SOA governance is a

Copyright © 2007 Accenture
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High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.
Accenture helps
unleash business
potential with service-
oriented architecture
As one of the world’s leading global
management consulting, technology
services and outsourcing companies,
Accenture can help businesses and
governments develop and execute on
plans to respond to rapid change with
SOA as a foundation.
Recognized by IT industry analysts as
a leader in this space, we focus on
value creation and harness deep
industry, business and technology
know-how—including a growing body
of best-in-class processes, methods
and tools—to help your organization
achieve its SOA vision. These
processes, methods and tools include
the Accenture SOA Assessment Model,
industry-specific offerings, and
Accenture Delivery Methods and
Tools. Our rich and deep SOA service
offerings are helping the world’s
leading businesses and governments
take significant steps on their
journeys towards high performance.
For more information
To learn how Accenture helps
organizations achieve high
performance by unleashing the
potential of service-oriented
architecture to simplify the business
on the inside while differentiating
it on the outside, visit
http://www.accenture.com/soa
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delivering innovation, Accenture
collaborates with its clients to help
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