HOLISTIC GOVERANCE OF INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES
Good SOA [service oriented architecture] governance resemble town meetings more than they do dictatorships. The biggest governance mistake organizations make is shortchanging communications and collaboration. i
Service oriented architecture seems a far distant discipline than forming and managing intentional communities. Yet, there is much in common, especially as it relates to governance. SOA addresses the IT needs of business organizations, composed of humans. Anne Thomas Manes, vice-president of the Burton Group advises, “SOA is about behavior, not something you build or buy. You have to change behavior to make it effective.” Op. Cite supra at 30.
Mike Matsumura, vice-president of marketing at Infravio adds, “It's about recognizing that prople are socially organized. SOA governance incorporates best practices around organizational dynamics and how human beings behave in organizations.” Id.
An enterprise architect at a financial institution warns that lack of communication can create animosity toward governance. “It's unreasonable to expect developers to adhere to policies that they aren't aware of up front.” Id. Mark Ericson, CTO of Midreef, puts it: “Build schools, not prisons. The goal is to help people conform to best practices, not police them.” Id.
Governance of SOA involves the organization and use of many artifacts, such as formatting, dynamic discovery and binding, registries, repositories, web service management, application program interfaces, and many others. Enterprises developing SOA do so by using standards, policies and centeralized investment and management, especially an highly automated systems. This organization needs to enforce the policies and take corrective action when they find noncompliance.
To forestall noncompliance as much as possible, communication, early and often, is one of the major keys. The other key are contracts. In context of developer-user, the contract sets down policies and procedures which each side agree to abide. “Contracts in this context are much less legal documents than they are producer-consumer interaction and govern the transaction that occur in context.” Op. Cite. Supra at 35. Along with the enforcement action a great deal of tolerance and “wiggle room” is needed.
Ed Horst, vice-president of product strategy at AmberPoint recommends building the governance structure early. “Try to get a little bit of management, registry, and security in early on. Bad habits are established in each of these areas that will complicate attempts to govern as the SOA effort scales.” Id. Windley concludes:
“SOA governance starts with a vision of what the governance process will accomplish. That vision is a collective effort of the people who will design, build, and use services – not only developers, but IT mangers and business unit leaders as well. A robust vision based on consensus derives from broad participation.” Id.
The lessons learned in developing SOA, can be applied to intentional communities, especially those whose sustainability depend in large part on creation and development of agricultural and business enterprises. The studies of Mondragon Cooperative Corporation of Spain, by several researchers over the 50 plus year history of Mondragon, have focused on the governance of the parent cooperative and its emerging subsidiary or co-cooperative business enterprises.
Mondragon has employed several keys over the years: social bonding, pay grades, workers as owners, a bank which functioned as a credit union and as a management consultant, educational institutions, and social service to the respective communities. Over time, the rules governing admittance of workers to membership, the compensation of workers, creation of expansion capital, social service involvement and many other aspects, have changed. The Mondragon model has infused much knowledge and insight relative to the governance studies conducted in the creation of the governance structure of Mutual Aid Society of America (MASA). ii These studies culminated in the paper, Mutual Aid Society of America, Mondragon & More
The governance of Mondragon was severely tested in 1976, when the workers of one of the subsidiary cooperatives went on strike. It was resolved only after conciliation and compromise was reached. iii This strike was about governance, namely who had the right to set the relative pay grades. At the time, the pay grades were from 1 to 4, meaning that the top paid person could only earn four times the pay of the lowest paid worker. In assigning pay grades, task complexity was one of the main criteria. Production rates and rate of error were not considered. Generally, the enterprise management made the decision about award of pay grades.
The strike by union disputed not only the pay grades, but who had the right to set the pay grades.