Some key activities that are often mentioned as being part of SOA governance are:

Managing the portfolio of services: This includes planning development of new services and updating current services.

Managing the service lifecycle: This is meant to ensure that updates of services do not disturb current services to the consumers.

Using policies to restrict behavior: Consistency of services can be ensured by having the rules applied to all the created services.

Monitoring performance of services: The consequences of service downtime or underperformance can be severe because of service composition. Therefore action can be taken instantly when a problem occurs by monitoring service performance and availability.