Tackling the Granularity Problem in Service Modularization

In the last few years, the principle of modularity has been increasingly applied to services as service providers seek to reduce time and cost of delivering customized services. Theoretically, the modularization process of a complex service system can be divided into three core steps: Analysis, module design, and architecture design. Practically, this process is much more complex and highly influenced by the degree of granularity of the considered service system elements. Depending on this degree, different interdependencies between the elements can be considered resulting in different modules. Therefore, we argue that diverse design decisions across the modularization process have to be made upfront from the end of the overall design process to the beginning of the service system analysis. Following this, we tailor a formerly proposed framework for service modularization by adding a framework calibration phase