I have long held the belief that governance is more about effective communication than anything else. To quoth my own horn:

…what is needed is a shared understanding of the architecture principles, frameworks, standards and best practices used within your organisation for providing and consuming Services.

How do you ensure that this shared understanding is
a) communicated effectively,
b) understood and
c) implemented by all.

A corollary of this view is that any governance tools ought to support this communication as their primary function. I’ve often thought that a wiki would make a pretty good governance tool. Good to see that Martin Fowler agrees. He describes an interesting “Human centric registry” based on a wiki with just enough automation to remove the drudgery. Martin describes the principles of the registry as:

• People develop and use services, so orient it around people
• Don’t expect people to enter stuff to keep it up to date, people are busy enough as it is.
• Make it easy for people to read and contribute.

(sorry UDDI, thank you for playing).