Service Elicitation Method Using Applied Qualitative Research Procedures - Advanced Design Approaches to Emerging Software Systems - page 8

Figure 2. Phases of the Qualitative Service Elicitation (QSE) method

of the enterprise; especially the ones falling under
the “Data”, “Function” and “People” core catego-
ries. The categories under the core categories are
identified and abstracted independently from each
other, allowing the elements in each column to
develop and saturate separately. The actual service
candidates are identified from the codes under
the numbered categories, and their granularity is
dependent of the relations to other categories. For
example, service candidates accessing data (con-
tent services) are identified from the codes under
the “Function” core category, but their granularity
is determined from their relations to the categories
in the “Data” core category. In this case, also the
level in hierarchy is important; if the relation is
made to a category with sub-categories, the service
candidate is an information aggregation service
candidate instead of a content service candidate.
During the open coding, the raw data is divided
into discrete parts and interpreted into codes or
labels describing the parts of the data (Robson,
2002). This division depends on the raw mate-
rial; parts can be parts of drawings in process
descriptions, words or sentences in business use
case descriptions, and so on. Each part is given a

label or code describing for what the part stands.
See Table 3 for an example.
To help thinking of the codes during the open
coding, the seven questions of the Zachman
Framework (1987) can be used repeatedly during
the analysis as a catalyst (See Table 2). Codes can
be seen as labels or names defining for what the
part in question stands. The wording used in the
material being analyzed can be used sometimes,
but often the analyst needs to invent a descriptive
name for a code. Categories are concepts, which
can be used to group several codes together. For
example both “toothbrush” and “toothpaste” can
be grouped under the “dental care products”
category, which can be seen as a sub-category for
the “product” category.
Additional notes should be written down for
each identified code to help divide the codes into
categories. The questions in the note column of
Table 2 are derived from the characteristics of the
sub-categories defined in Table 1.
The purpose of the axial coding is to link to-
gether the findings of the open coding (Robson,
2002). In this phase, the codes are grouped into
categories containing similar codes and categories