Defining service capability operations

This topic discusses the definition of service capability operations.

Role: business analyst
Input: candidate services
Deliverables: defined service capability operations

Identified service candidates within the customized processes must be formally defined within the Business Object Model (BOM) by:

Locating an existing capability operation or
Creating a new capability operation that:
- Models its information requirements
- Analyzes its decomposition where required
- Modifies information types within the model to capture requirements

Locating capabilities and capability operations
Capabilities are represented in the Business Object Model (BOM) as Classes with the <<capability>> stereotype applied. A <<capability>> class should contain capability related operations. Capabilities and capability operations in BOM are hierarchically categorized in a <<capability>> view package to ease content management.
Defining the capability operation
After identifying the correct location for a capability operation within the Business Object Model (BOM), that capability operation must be created and fully defined.
Mapping capability operations to process context
Having located and defined a capability operation, the first step is to map that capability operation to the location within the analysis process that invokes the capability operation.
Adding informational requirements
Once a capability operation has been established and mapped, a high-level view of that capability operation is constructed, involving the identification of the informational requirements of the capability operation.
Locating types within BOM
The informational requirements are incomplete without details of the types of each input or output parameter. The next step identifies a corresponding type for each informational requirement within the model.
Decomposing service candidates
In many cases, service candidate definitions are not enough. Assuming a service is not a monolithic unit of code, we must analyze potential delegations between service candidates to maximize the reuse of services and the reuse patterns between services.
Identifying nested service candidates
Reusable tasks must be externalized as separate service candidates, so that the requirements they capture can be reused in other service candidate decompositions.
Where do I stop?
This pattern could continue indefinitely, where the user can decompose service candidates into nested service candidates, which are further decomposed. This raises the question of where analysis should stop.

Parent topic: Customizing the Business Object Model