SOA Maturity Models as guidance to select service identification methods: A research agenda

Abstract

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural style for applications that are built by composing loosely coupled, interoperable services. Service identification is one of the earliest and most significant activities for successful implementation of SOA in the enterprise. Service identification aims at deriving high-quality services that satisfy the desired service design principles. However, service identification still remains a challenge for organizations due to the lack of unified, comprehensive, and systematic methods. Although, there do exist many Service Identification Methods (SIMs), the practitioners usually cannot easily select the most appropriate one, due to the heterogeneity of the existing SIMs. This research study focuses on investigating to what extent Welke's SOA Maturity Model (SOAMM) would help and influence the selection of appropriate SIM and improve its applicability. In the meanwhile, the work explores how Method Engineering (ME) approaches and techniques impact the development of SIMs and improve the applicability of these methods. The study aims at designing a systematic and truly service-oriented situational SIM in SOA for identifying high-quality services in real-life system. In this paper, we present the research agenda for adopting Welke's SOAMM as guidance to select SIMs.