Fragment selection and context factors in situational methods for service identification

Situational method engineering is an approach to dynamically configure method fragments. In doing so, complete methods can be tailored to suit concrete project situations. Identifying such situations and selecting appropriate fragments is crucial for a successful method engineering process. In the field of service identification for service-oriented architectures most existing methods follow a one-size-fits-all approach that fails to acknowledge the broad variety of concrete circumstances that form the organizational context. In this paper, we argue that situational method engineering can be used to tailor service identification methods to particular application contexts. As a first step towards this goal, we analyze two explorative case studies and related literature to derive a basic set of relevant context factors. Moreover, the influence of these context factors on the selection and configuration of method fragments is examined. Adapting service identification methods to concrete project situations will improve their applicability and lead to a better service design.