Governance – Where is the Carrot?

Our folks are just back from the IBM Impact conference. And clearly, IBM thinks SOA is alive and kicking, as Joe McKendrick reports in his blog.

Well, so do we. Businesses have been services oriented for a long time. They divide their core strengths into a variety of services they offer to consumers. However, do you ever see an insurance company with two different divisions selling you the same type of service? Not really. There is one of each and different services build upon each other.

Service orientation in IT follows the same principle. The technologies available today make this an even easier task.

The ease of creating services naturally leads to the issue of governance. How do you prevent developers from re-inventing the wheel each time? How do you ensure that services conform to your operational standards and best practices? How do you prevent unauthorized access to services? The list goes on.

I recently finished discussing governance (the broader topic) with a customer, a large Telco. They suggested that governance is increasingly difficult to implement, not withstanding all the other governance software designed to help. Apparently, developers simply tire of the additional work involved with governance. They ask – what’s in it for me? Any effort that requires a non-zero investment of time and energy, without an incentive, could easily flounder.

Whether you use commercial governance products or not, how do you provide a “carrot” to promote governance adoption amongst the IT teams? Some customers have explored the idea of tying developer bonuses to governance adoption. Some, on the other hand, have considered firing developers that don’t participate. Talk about principles of capitalism and communism applied to governance!