SOA Governance [Paperback]

Todd Biske (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2008 | ISBN-10: 1847195865 | ISBN-13: 978-1847195869

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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Approach

Follow the IT management of Advasco, a fictitious financial corporation, through their journey of implementing SOA Governance into their company. Each chapter will provide a narrative of how their efforts towards SOA adoption are faring and the obstacles that they face. The second half of each chapter explains the situations that arose for Advasco, along with the role that SOA Governance played in the scenario, either through the lack of it, or through the successful application of people, policies, and processes.

By seeing the journey made in the realistic example, you will be able to understand exactly what is involved in the process of SOA governance and be able to avoid the pitfalls that Advasco encountered along the way. With an in-depth analysis of the progress made and the tools that were used to get there, you will learn how to improve your company's efficiency and productivity using service-oriented architecture governance.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for enterprise architects, technical leaders, and senior IT managers who wish to implement SOA Governance into their companies. This book assumes that the reader has a basic familiarity with service-oriented architecture and software development lifecycle methodologies. The reader does not need detailed knowledge of web services technologies.

About the Author

Todd Biske is a Senior Enterprise Architect with Monsanto in St. Louis, Missouri. He has over 15 years of experience in Information Technology, both as a corporate practitioner and as a consultant, working with companies involved with Agriculture, Atmospheric Sciences, Financial Services, Insurance, and Travel and Leisure. His interests include Service Oriented Architecture, Systems Management Technologies, Usability, and Human-Computer Interaction. He has a M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a member of the SOA Consortium, is a frequent conference presenter, and writes a popular blog on strategic IT topics.

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (October 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847195865
• ISBN-13: 978-1847195869
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.5 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,590,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am an enterprise architect at a Fortune 25 company with experience in financial services, manufacturing, and health care verticals. Since I'm not a consultant, I did not write my book to help grow a business or sell product. I wrote it to share knowledge with my peers, and hopefully help them be successful in their SOA efforts. Much of the press is dominated by consultants or vendors, and while their material can be very good, sometimes it's good to hear from someone focused on making things work as an employee.

While I don't do too much coding anymore, I am very proud to be an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where I received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science. I'm even more proud of my family and my Catholic faith, without which, I would not be where I am today. Thanks for learning more about me, and hopefully you'll find my book useful in your SOA efforts.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Good start for understanding SOA governance November 19, 2010

By Jan

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

In the IT world everybody seems to have his own understanding of governance. Todd did a good job in this book describing the experiences of a company facing the SOA era. Very well readable book with enough level of details to get a good understanding of how the tree P's within governance (People, Processes and Policies) should be treated to make SOA governance a success within an organisation.

5.0 out of 5 stars Must have book on SOA Governance November 1, 2008

By Michael Kavis

Format:Paperback

Great book by Todd Biske. I wrote a review of this book on my blog (Google "Mike Kavis"). In summary, Todd uses a fictional company and takes us through a multi year journey from project exception to enterprise wide success. Along the way he presents us with real life scenarios and the solutions to deal with the issues. It is remarkable that Todd can write about a topic like governance and keep us on the edge of our seats at the same time. Must read!

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 Reasons to Read Todd Biske's SOA Governance Book October 26, 2008

By Brenda M. Michelson

Format:Paperback

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to read the first draft of my friend Todd Biske's SOA Governance book. Now that the book is available, I want to share 5 reasons why SOA practitioners and managers should read this book.

1. Todd's view of SOA Governance is outcome, rather than product, centric. Todd defines SOA Governance as "the combination of people, policies, and processes within your organization that will ensure that the desired behaviors of your strategic SOA initiative are achieved".

Examples of those desired behaviors, or outcomes, are "increasing the number of assets reused by 10% each year", "decreasing the average time to produce a solution by 10%" and/or "increasing the number of projects delivered by 10% each year".

While Todd does speak to the technology / product categories that enable SOA governance, at no point does he equate (confuse) SOA governance with the acquisition / implementation of a registry, repository, service broker or runtime monitor.

2. The management fable will resonate with any practitioner who has ever worked in corporate IT. Todd explains SOA Governance in the context of the SOA journey of a fictional corporation. The book follows Advasco's SOA advocates, implementers and adversaries from an early win, to the trials of sharing, through the mysteries of problem detection and resolution, and finally to SOA success. As the tale unfolds, Todd points out problem areas, suggests corrective action and supplies best practices.

3. The reference chapter is worth the price of the book. Even if management fables aren't your thing, you'll find Chapter 8, Establishing SOA Governance at Your Organization, to be an indispensable reference. This chapter covers:

-People: solution architect, business analyst, tech lead/domain architect, enterprise/technology architect, information architect, security architect, IT manager, service manager/owner, platform manager
-Organization: Enterprise Architecture, COE/Competency Center, Review Boards
-Policies: Pre-Project, Project and Run-time
-Processes: Establishment, Education/Communication, Enforcement, Measurement
-Technologies: Registry/Repository, Service Testing Platforms, ESB, XML Appliances, Security Gateways, Service Management Platforms, Service Invocation & Exposure Frameworks

4. The advice on governance -- policy establishment, communication, enforcement, measurement and feedback -- is pragmatic, not autocratic. During their SOA journey, the Advasco team faces challenges where what's best for the architecture (long-run) isn't necessarily best for the business that day. Instead of taking an architecture hard line, or business shortcut, the team considers options and implications, and makes pragmatic trade-offs.

5. Exhibiting good SOA form, the book is easily consumed and right-sized.