With the widespread adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA) as the leading paradigm for the development of business applications, the need for adequate governance mechanisms to keep control of the increasing complexity inherently introduced by SOA arises. However, current approaches to SOA governance are often limited to either design time or runtime aspects of SOA governance, despite the need for adequate governance mechanisms covering the complete SOA lifecycle. Furthermore, no common understanding of SOA governance exists today, as many solution vendors misleadingly label SOA management products as solutions for SOA governance.