Observations of service identification from two enterprises

Service-oriented computing has created new requirements for information systems development processes and methods. The adoption of service-oriented development requires service identification methods matching the challenge in enterprises. A wide variety of service identification methods (SIM) have been proposed, but less attention has been paid to the actual requirements of the methods. This paper provides an ethnographical look at challenges in service identification based on data from 14 service identification sessions, providing insight into the practice of service identification. The findings identified two types of service identification sessions and the results can be used for selecting the appropriate SIM based on the type of the session.