Service Elicitation Method Using Applied Qualitative Research Procedures

Abstract

This chapter introduces QSE, the Qualitative Service Elicitation method. It applies qualitative research procedures in service elicitation. Service engineering practice lacks lightweight methods to identify service candidates in projects with tight schedules. QSE provides a systematic method to analyze requirement material in service-oriented systems development with a feasible effort. QSE uses the procedures of the grounded theory research method to elicit service candidates from business process descriptions and business use case descriptions. The chapter describes the method with examples and a case study.

Anatomy of one service-oriented architecture implementation and reasons behind low service reuse

“…Categorizing the data from another case study [44] revealed that 77 % of the analyzed services (24 out of 31) and 92 % of the potentially reusable services (12 out of 13) were content services (type 1a). Sharing business data also seemed to be a major driver for service reuse in this case project.…”

“…Different viewpoints can be combined with triangulation [45], to provide a business viewpoint to the phenomena of service reuse in enterprises: (1) The purpose of almost all services in the case ESB was to share data; (2) almost all potentially reusable services were related to sharing data in another case study [44]; (3) SOA adoption in general has been reported to improve data sharing [38,41,42]; and (4) runtime service reuse is mandatory to enable data sharing between service consumers [38]. All these viewpoints support the argument that data reuse provides enterprises motivation to pursue service reuse of data services.…”