Achieving SOA Governance through Organizational Consensus SOA e-Government Conference Hosted by MITRE and The Federal SOA Community of Practice September 30, 2008

Achieving SOA Governance through Organizational Consensus Challenges Federal Agencies face in selling & executing SOA Why Governance When is the time right Executive Support – Defining the Value Proposition Stakeholder Incentive Identifying key stakeholders Identify strategies to overcome knowledge gaps and inertia Workshop Format – The Tool for Developing Organizational Concurrence Strawman Models Integrating Services Governance into the organization Q & A Appendix

Governance – A Central Pillar of SOA SOA Principles Governance Enterprise Architecture Guidance Design Patterns Common Services Platforms & Tools Center of Excellence Messaging SOA Roadmap

Challenges Federal Agencies face in selling & executing SOA Resource Constraints Organizational Silos Technology Transfer Resistance to Change System Silos Incentive: What’s in it for me?

Why Governance? SOA Governance defines the principles, processes, and roles required to manage, use and update the Service-Oriented Architecture. Key considerations include compliance with external requirements (FEA, OMB, etc.) and extension of existing life-cycle process details and control/quality gates. Supports SOA rollout success by providing a well defined and accepted set of principles, Provide clear definition of the development process, Enhances lines of communication across project teams that know the business, and Organizational support for governance and policy enforcement. Lack of Governance will promote new silos (Why? When individual business units/groups make their own decisions about what and how to develop applications,.  they create silos; because these decisions may be incompatible with one-another and certainly don't take into account the needs of other business units. Why do I care? With centralized governance, we make decisions that make sense for the entire enterprise while taking into account the needs of all groups. Service Orientation is becoming more popular and we want to “catch the horse before it leave the barn”

Governance – When is the time right? Establish a Light-weight Governance Model up front. You do not know everything at once You cannot do everything at once You do not want to inhibit innovation, growth or adoption, but you don’t want to recreate the Wild West Establish, and experiment with, some SOA Building Blocks Design, Develop, and Implement an initial set of Services Develop initial design patterns Put a very basic SOA Platform in place Using your experience, develop an SOA Roadmap Define what you want to achieve Establish your priorities Develop a realistic plan on how you want to get there Your Roadmap should reflect a Capability Model that allows your organization to grow in your targeted areas at a pace that your organization can absorb. There is no one- size-fits-all answer. Wild West – Shoot ‘em all, and let God sort them out. Marge Simpson, The Simpson’s - Your Uncle Arthur used to have a saying. "Shoot em' all and let God sort it out." Unfortunately, one day he put his theory into practice. It took 75 federal marshals to bring him down. We do not have that kind of leadership

Executive Support – Defining the value proposition of Common Services Governance Obtaining Executive Support “Significant change initiatives require strong support from executive leadership. This typically only happens when there is a compelling need to make the change and the senior management of the organization understands the need and drives the change.” (Practical Guide to Federal SOA, section 4.1.2, http://smw.osera.gov/pgfsoa/index.php/Welcome) Common Services are enterprise assets that must be developed with enterprise quality according to enterprise standards and policies to ensure ongoing operations, reduce integration costs and complexities, and mitigate risks. Governance provides the mechanisms necessary to ensure Common Services conform to and deliver on stated promises: Enterprise standards and expectations of Integration, Reduced Costs, Increased Business Agility, Extend lifetime of legacy systems while facilitating Orderly Transition from Legacy to Modernized Systems Ensures consideration of provider by consumer Ensures consideration of the consumer by the provider Service Level Agreements

Stakeholder Incentive: SOA Success promotes Organizational Success A key challenge is to make Service Ownership and consumption desirable While the Service consumer (and the organization as a whole) has a clear advantage to reuse, the Service provider currently has little or no incentive to develop services. After all, in a Project-oriented culture, a Service provider is generally provided budget to develop individual projects, not Common Services. Providers and Consumer need to know they are not wasting their time working on Enterprise Services, Governance Coordinates Design/Development/Implementation For the Executive - Concentrates limited resources where and when needed on Enterprise level Common Services For the Developers – Governance insulate them from polarizing prioritization issues and other non development issues in a multi-consumer environment For the Business – Realize some capabilities sooner, aggregate cost of services between organizations Conclusion: Implementation of SOA concepts and execution provides benefits to all stakeholders, but an initial investment is required.

Identifying key stakeholders Who should be part of developing governance? Anybody who has to live by it… Developers Project Managers Technical Advisors Engineers Infrastructure Operations Security Enterprise Architects Platforming & Tooling Expert Governance

Identifying key stakeholders (continued) Start Collaborating Determining key technology stakeholders One on one meetings to discuss issues, develop consensus for the approach with key stakeholders (confirm stakeholder-ship or get recommendations, repeat if necessary with appropriate stakeholders) Obtain commitment to support effort, to be or send representatives Determine specific individuals to participate Right people from the right organizations within the Enterprise They know how the organization functions Ability to determine transition path Decision authority on behalf of their organization Ability to communicate and excite their organization

Identifying strategies to overcome knowledge gaps and inertia First identify the objectives: Light weight integrate Integrated with existing organization Limit creating new committees or governance bodies Define process to use to develop consensus Baseline existing governance Integrate new governance into existing IT Governance Workshop format Present high level “strawman” of entry points and processes Lead group through thought processes and use cases to develop governance

Workshop Format – The Tool for Developing Organizational Concurrence SOA Concepts Service Definitions SOA Specific Roles and Responsibilities SOA Tools (Registry / Repository/ etc.) SOA Use Cases Enterprise Life Cycle processes ELC Roles and Responsibilities Policies ELC Artifacts Identify the actors Identify the roles and responsibilities Identify new and changed processes Identify the policies Identify Services Attributes for the Service Registry Preparation for Integrated Governance Workshops Gather SOA Specific Information Gather Existing Lifecycle and Governance Information Integrated Governance Workshops Discussion of what happens at each stage for each use case There are two key areas to focus on in preparation for the Integrated Workshops: SOA Specific preparation and Existing ELC preparation. The first area is SOA Specific Knowledge. This information will be new to most of the participants. It is important that you will be able to provide and instruct the participants on the SOA Concepts, Roles and Tools that are involved in SOA. At the IRS, we used our existing experience we had gathered via our PoC work with services and wrote a whitepaper that helped clarify roles and responsibilities. This was able to facilitate the discussions in our Integrated Workshops. The second area to concentrate on is the existing ELC and Governance that is already in place. This is crucial. Most people do not know the full ELC processes. They know where they intersect with it. Additionally, in order to understand and be able to integrate all of the SOA Touch Points, as well as to be able to make authoritative recommendations on how to modify it, it is important to have the full, documented process. To prep for these workshops, you might want to arrange Just In Time training, or set up other knowledge transfer sessions. Once you have adequately prepared, you will want to schedule your workshops with the participants. You will not be able to address all issues within a single workshop. At the IRS, we scheduled four to drill down all six of our life cycle stages (Service Identification, Service Re-Use, Service Design, Service Compliance and Validation, Service Development/testing, and Service Deployment) During the workshops, you will need to… Identify the actors Identify the roles and responsibilities Identify new and changed processes Identify the policies Identify Services Attributes for the Service Registry One of the easiest ways to do this is to step through each of the use cases. Identify who should be involved in each step, who is responsible, what type of information will be needed, what types of decisions will be required and who can make them, etc. Common Services Life Cycle - Service Identification, Service Re-Use, Service Design, Service Compliance and Validation, Service Development / Testing, and Service Deployment

Strawman Models – see appendix for full size examples

Achieving Common Services Governance through Organizational Concurrence provides Organizational Buy-In to a process that they helped develop A governance process that is reasonable, integrated into the existing proven processes Common Services Platforms & Tools Governance Enterprise Architecture Guidance Center of Excellence Design Patterns Messaging SOA Principles SOA Roadmap

Q & A Panelist Sam Kneppar Sam.Kneppar@irs.gov Kimberly Rabe Kimberly.A.Rabe@irs.gov Frank Tirado ftirado@mitre.org

Appendix – Workshop Strawman The IRS Services Life Cycle

Appendix – Workshop Strawman The IRS’ Role and Responsibilities during a services life cycle

Appendix – The IRS’ Strawman Use Cases examples

Service Opportunity Identified Appendix – Workshop Strawman The IRS’ Strawman Use Cases examples (continued) ELC Yes No Service Opportunity Identified