DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS ON THE GRANULARITY OF SOFTWARE SERVICES

The past decade has validated service-orientation as one of the most popular topics in IT literature and a major focus for important players in the software market. As there is a direct connection between organization agility and flexibility of software systems, service-orientation is regarded as a promising solution to challenges related to software adaptation to changes in the business environment. Nevertheless, flexibility is far from being an intrinsic feature of service-based solutions as it is highly dependent on the modeling approaches used for service identification and specification. Designing services with the right level of granularity is one of the most problematic aspects of service-orientation which directly impacts reusability, flexibility and other software characteristics. This paper offers a detailed investigation into the challenges concerning service granularity and factors to consider when deciding on a specific level of granularity, as well as potential consequences and trade-offs.