Feedback mechanisms should also include a review board for the process itself, because constant tweaking of the process is a fact of life. A review board leads to continued evolutionary improvement.

In the end, the governance process you create must match the culture of your organization. Some companies do better with more centralized processes, while others have better luck with decentralization.

Just-in-time architectures

An SOA enterprise architecture is one of the most important artifacts that the governance process produces. But building one is no small feat. In fact, you might as well reconcile yourself to the idea that it will never be completely finished.

So what's the order of assembly in the never-ending task of building an SOA enterprise architecture? For many organizations, the most effective route is to build pieces just in time. Start with an interoperability framework, since it's the easiest part of the enterprise architecture to create. An interoperability framework is a list of supported standards that has been annotated with meta-information, including status indicators that say which standards are required, suggested, supported, or ready for sunset.