There is a lot to cover when discussing what SOA actually means, how do you explain it to someone in just a few words? Not an easy one.

However one thing that constantly comes through is that SOA Governance, in particular Policy Management, can make a huge difference to the success of an implementation.

Here is a blog entry about this topic, which is extremely interesting considering that at the moment I am looking into more detail about the offering from WebLayers. This is a tool that can assist with the automation of policy checking. It comes with a large number of out of the box policies which will get you going from day one and this is something that can benefit the whole group.

Finding the right tools to help the whole process is critical to the success of any SOA project. Policy management may not initially sound important or be that interesting but it’s important to consider from day one. Manually checking policies is possible but as services grow and the number of policies grow, doing this manually is just not practical. Also by automating the process it means that the checks can be applied to many different stages in the development lifecycle. With the right tool in place not only can the process be automated it should still allow for manual validation of the policies.

However one thing that is much more important than the tool itself are the people. If people do not see the benefit of such a tool, or policy management in general then it will fail, the mindset must be right. If this is a problem then this is the first port of call. To make things work you need the buy in from the majority of people that will be using the system, get that and life becomes much easier. You don’t need every single person just the majority and with a bit of luck the rest will follow suite. Everyone needs to see that these things are providing them with a benefit, not just something that is checking up on them.