Modeling a governance process of optimizing a portfolio of services in a governed SOA and generating, in dependence upon the modeled governance process, one or more automation modules, each automation module including a module of computer program instructions that supports performance of one or more steps of the modeled governance process, where the modeled governance process includes determining whether a collection of service artifacts matches one or more service artifacts stored in a service registry; if no service artifacts stored in the service registry match the collection of service artifacts, initiating creation of a service in accordance with the collection of service artifacts; if one or more service artifacts stored in the service registry match the collection of service artifacts: selecting, in dependence upon predefined action selection criteria, a service administration action to perform; obtaining approval of the selected service administration action; and initiating the selected service administration action.