Hi Ken
There is a lot I agree with here. I do have a few differences
though ... (life would be *so* boring :)
1. I agree completely that participants can be organizations. And
that the cardinalities are *..*.
2. I have a bit of heartache with the way that you characterize
goals of participants and organizations. I do not think that they
should be conflated:
a. An organization may have goals; and governance may be in
furtherance of those goals. (A link that is not to be assumed, but to
be strived for I believe.)
b. A participant's goals are (IMO) distinct from any organization's
goals. In particular, I do not believe that governance attempts to
satisfy participants' goals except in so far as they satisfy the
organization's goals.
c. One of the questions that a potential participant (or potential
non-participant) must answer is whether the organization's goals are
sufficiently aligned with the participants goals to permit the
membership. We all know that this is normally not a 100% fit; but is
some kind of balance/juggling act.
3. I used the term organ as a kind of abstraction of representative
body. For me, organs of control are the people/bodies that have
authority of some kind.
Different governance frameworks will lead to different
arrangements of organs (some on the left, some on the right :-) And
yes, in a large well managed framework, there are likely to be many
layers of organs.
4. A defining characteristic of an organ of control is its remit
(an English-english word meaning sphere of control/understanding/
influence/authority). The difference between a democratic congress
and a dictator is one of degree not kind.
The remit identifies the kinds of policies and rules that the organ
may promulgate and expect to have enforced. I think that bob's
functions are another way of expressing the concept of remit; but am
hesitant to claim this.
5. I do not see the relationship between organization and
participant as strictly membership. Organizations are also about the
relationship between the participants. Again, there is normally a
limit/definition/constraint on the kind of relationships captured by
an organization.
This allows both of us to be both members of the local gym and a
company and have separate relationships in the different contexts.
Frank
On Sep 6, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Ken Laskey wrote:
> I'm looking at the diagram I uploaded at the beginning of
> yesterday's meeting and at the diagram Danny uploaded after the
> meeting and I'm trying to merge all this with what was said during
> the meeting. Let's see where this collection of thoughts takes me
> (and you hearty enough to read on).
>
> I started with the diagrams but then got stuck on Bob's thoughts on
> governance where there is one "type" that has overriding authority
> and another "type" where somewhat independent groups work
> together . We've often talk about this as within enterprises and
> across enterprises but for this discussion I'd like to call them
> Authoritative and Cooperative. How do these fit with the
> diagrams? Well, they could be subclasses of Governance but I think
> they may more appropriately be at (or near) the ends of a (maybe
> continuous, maybe stepwise) spectrum. We'll see where that goes
> later.
>
> To back up a second, note that my diagram has Participants agreeing
> to Governance and Danny has Governance having jurisdiction over
> Participants. After a chuckle or two, I think these can work
> together because part of what the participant agrees to is being
> under a jurisdiction. Participants can remove themselves from a
> jurisdiction by moving in some physical sense (e.g. where you live
> or where you work) or by selectively ignoring the Governance (e.g.
> outright defiance or the time honored approach of slow-rolling).
> This doesn't cover being born in an authoritarian (note difference
> with authoritative) regime and having no escape, but for SOA I
> think we can consider that an edge case.
>
> So I start with Participants who may be members of Organizations.
> I could just note that an Organization can be a Participant and do
> away with this but I wanted to show (although didn't include the
> cardinality) that a Participant can be a member of more than one
> Organization and both the Participant and the Organization can (and
> do) come under multiple sets of Governance Processes (yes, it
> should probably be plural in my diagram).
>
> While we're at subclasses of Participant, Danny has Decision Makers
> as a subclass and these entities do all the governance work. I
> don't think this is accurate because it isn't always "decision
> makers" that express Goals. Participants can act as individuals or
> representatives of organizations. If representing an organization,
> they probably act with some level of cognizance by Decision Makers
> but the specifics (at least at some level of detail) may not
> (probably not?) have Decision Makers review. I would say the whole
> Participant/Decision Maker combination is demonstrated by Working
> Group/TC participants. On the other hand, I see a correspondence
> between Danny's Decision Makers and my Representative Body, so
> let's not downplay it too quickly. (Note, I am no more ond of
> Decision Makers than I was of Representative Body. Any other
> suggestions?)
>
> So let's get back to Authoritative and Cooperative Governance.
> With Authoritative governance, there is a recognized entity who
> should be running things. This says nothing about whether the
> recognized entity is officially blessed or whether it is
> particularly effective. The recognized entity is almost certainly
> a Participant and a Decision Maker.
>
> With Cooperative governance, the independent entities agree to a
> Governance Framework under which there will be Governance
> Processes, and the collection of independent entities form the
> Decision Makers. Actually, the collection becomes the recognized
> entity of the Authoritative governance.
>
> Is it appropriate to say that any Governance requires cooperation
> and the question of authoritative is really authoritative to whom
> and can you make decisions (reflected through Rules and Policies)
> stick? If this is true, a single governance diagram covers both
> cases without either being explicitly represented in the diagram.
>
> Some other notes on Danny's diagram:
> - My intent for Governance Framework is it would form the structure
> for the Governance Processes rather than "support" it.
> - Management needs to have more than knowledge of policy; it has to
> provide direction for Management.
>
> With respect to Bob's question of where functions fit in, there are
> processes for performing functions and rules and regulations that
> provide details. The operational how falls to management. That
> said, I don't think functions get added to the diagrams but can be
> included in the accompanying text.
>
> Something captured in my diagram I don't think appears in others is
> the idea that participants create local management to create local
> rules and regulations in addition to those that may be created more
> globally. Thus, Management Body is instantiated at multiple levels.
>
> While writing this, I have been modifying my diagram to capture
> these and other thoughts. The result so far is no additional
> classes but many additional relationships. I think it is an
> improvement but YMMV.
>
> One final thing: processes for assessing and enforcing compliance
> have to be part of the Governance Processes and the particulars are
> defined by Rules and Regulations. This includes adjudication, from
> voluntary negotiation to no-nonsense enforcement. Compliance is
> with Rules and Regulation, not Policy; here, I define Policy as
> statements of what you want to occur whereas Rules and Regulations
> supply the metrics on which compliance is evaluated. Now the last
> couple sentences may form the basis of a couple more lines on the
> attached diagram, but frankly at the moment I'm not up to adding them.
>
> Diagram is attached for those who can see it directly. For others,
> I'll upload to OASIS.
>
> Ken
>
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------------
> Ken Laskey
> MITRE Corporation, M/S H305 phone: 703-983-7934
> 7515 Colshire Drive fax: 703-983-1379
> McLean VA 22102-7508
>
