It was hard not to participate in last week's water cooler chatter about the 23 quadrillion dollar package of cigarettes that was erroneously charged to a New Hampshire man due to a computer programming error. 

Meanwhile, earlier this week Infoworld's Eric Knorr posted an interesting column that posits whether or not the financial meltdown could have been avoided - or at least been lessened - if SOA governance was in place. In the article, Knorr recounts a conversation he had with a former Citigroup SOA architect who believes that 'SOA would have made massive financial risk across the organization impossible to ignore.'

While the credit card swipe computing error was easily fixed, that's obviously not the case with the financial services industry. 

Of course, there are always several factors that lead to the collapse of any project or market for that matter. And while I'd never claim that SOA governance is a magical elixir for all that ails IT, you have to wonder whether or not potential computer glitches or full scale catastrophes could have been avoided if the right mechanisms were in place to at least alert teams proactively when the software that's relied on to support their business is headed down the wrong path.

Not sure why governance is viewed as an aftermath by a lot of architects and developers when an ounce of prevention is surely worth more than a pound of cure.

-Jeff