Service Elicitation Method Using Applied Qualitative Research Procedures - Advanced Design Approaches to Emerging Software Systems - page 14

Figure 7. Top level categories of the case project (actual category names disguised)

catalogue against the actual solution architecture
made in the project with traditional methods by
the experts. From the project point of view, this
review acted as an additional verification for the
solution architecture, and for the research, this
comparison gave an opportunity to validate the
outcome against similar analysis made by the
experts.
The planned changes to the actual business
processes were minor in the case project, as the
main driver was technical renewal. Respectively,
the needed interfaces and connections to the
external systems were carefully identified by the
project, as the existing solution provided a good
basis for the project design. Similarly, the business
process and use case descriptions were more or
less up-to-date and solid, providing a good basis
for QSE analysis.

A total of 47 business process descriptions were
analyzed covering the main operative processes
of one business line. The analyzed project scope
included 16 business level use cases and the use
case analysis resulted in 17 global and 14 local
service candidates as shown in Figure 7. These
service candidates were modeled using the Integra-
tion Use Case method (Alkkiomäki & Smolander,
2007), catalogued and compared to the solution
architecture created by the project.
The comparison showed that QSE analysis
was able to reveal all the services identified by
the project with traditional methods. The scope
and grouping of the service candidates were dif-
ferent compared to the project, but it was possible
to map each elicited service candidate to the
project design. On the other hand, the work made
by the project was thorough and thus QSE analy-