A scenario-based governance method for coordination of service life cycles

Abstract

Most of today's organizations are still far from profiting from the full potential of web service technology. Organizations invoke each other's web services, but do hardly synchronize the life cycles of individual web services with each other. When realizing an integrated service this might cause failures and requires a governance method for synchronizing the life cycles among organizations. In this paper, we emphasize that there is a need for such a method and the basis of the method is explained. This consists of the identification of possible life cycle related scenarios when trying to integrate services. The method also provides support to coordinate and track changes in service life cycles. Based on the different scenarios when attempting to integrate services that have different life cycles, coordination to communicate life cycle changes and having clear agreements about expectations are needed for successful service integration. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.