Systematic Design of Modular Service Architectures for Complex Service Systems

Abstract

The principle of modularity has become more and more important for designing modular service systems. During the last years, a number of modularization methods have been proposed and applied to services. In order to systematize and compare these methods, we conducted a systematic integrative literature review. We identified 12 methods published between 1998 and 2013 and developed a set of eight criteria for the subsequent analysis. The results of this analysis indicate that the major part of these methods focuses on analysis and design tasks during the development of modular service architectures. Subsequently, we propose a framework for service modularization that consists of four phases: framework calibration, analysis, module design and architecture design. This framework especially focuses on the systematization of the tasks to be conducted during the analysis of a service system and the design of a modular service architecture. We argue that an iterative refinement and a continual validation of the constituent elements and their interdependencies during the whole modularization process with experts from different domains are indispensable. Finally, we discuss our proposition in relation to existing modularization methods as well as regarding its strengths and limitations.