For those of you who have experienced projects without clear decision-making processes, you'll have felt the pain of the churns as decisions are constantly questioned and modified due to the influence of various stakeholders. Politics gets in the way and the objectives of the project end up getting challenged, budgets get cut, and the long-term vision is missing or confusing.

While this is something you can expect from a traditional IT project, a blockchain project has the characteristic of having a good deal more stakeholders. A typical business network will be composed of organizations that are sometimes competing and sometimes cooperating. In this context, it is not hard to see that there are high risks of finding conflicting perspectives, points of view, and interests.

Whether you are a developer or a CIO, understanding what you can expect from such projects and how a governance model can help alleviate some of the issues may be helpful in preparing you for what is to come.

This chapter will present a few of the patterns we have seen in various industries and explore how these blockchain business networks can be formed, as well as how the underlying governance model functions.

This chapter will provide a view on the following topics:

• What is governance?
• Various business models
• Role of governance in a business network
• Typical governance structure and phases
• Roles and processes to consider
• Impact of governance on the IT solution