I recently wrote an article that appeared in eBizQ on the topic of SOA governance. In this article, I argue that the primary reason that many pundits have declared “SOA is dead” is that the traditional “top-down” approach to SOA and governance have failed. Vendors have for too long evangelized a “big bang” re-architecture of development processes, using their tools to enforce new behaviors from developers, in order to realize the benefits of SOA. These approaches have failed because they make the average developer’s life more difficult, rather than simpler. Development teams, already stretched for time and resources, are generally reluctant to do extra work in the pursuit of some abstract notion of “service reuse.” Instead, modern governance approaches that are getting traction today actually help developers by integrating with existing tools and streamlining, rather than obstructing, familiar processes. (more…)