A service model for component-based development

The promise of component-based development - the development of large-scale applications from off-the-shelf software components - may remain elusive unless we complement the facilitating technologies with processes that are designed to take account - and advantage - of components right from the start. Blackbox components present a number of serious challenges whose impact may offset the potential benefits of their use unless they can be addressed successfully. We describe a process that makes use of a service-model to map user-requirements to components, and which offers support for some of the challenges posed: component-oriented requirements elicitation, negotiation, design, verification and change management. Our approach also supports a hybrid component/service-based development where off-the-shelf components and services can coexist in the same system.