A decision model for optimizing the service portfolio in SOA governance

Effective service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance requires an appropriate process in place by which services described by a service model become candidates to enter the service portfolio. This is a planning for the appropriate identified services to create business agility and maximize reuse. Not all services in the service model can be realized in the form of IT solutions, so if our intended use of the service portfolio is to drive IT development planning, we must first decide which services are potentially realizable and which services are not. In this paper, we present a decision model to evaluate the services based on the proposed metrics. Comparing the relative value of each service with its development or maintenance cost should make the prioritization. The decision model is useful to support an approach to identifying the optimum portfolio of services based on the prioritization of business needs, followed by an estimation of the technical feasibility for each candidate service.