When it comes to a characterization of actual Integrated Composition and Execution Environment (ICEE) products, composition granularity is a key differentiator. Granularity is the extent to which a larger entity is subdivided. Composition granularity refers to the scope of a composition's functionality and behavior.

Fine-grained compositions are entities that form logically atomic units (e.g. "date" (combines day, month and year), and "combination box" (combines the functions of an entry field with a drop-down list)).

Medium-grained compositions represent individually meaningful entities, such as aggregate business information entities (e.g. "invoice address", "order", "role") and presentation entities (e.g. "menu", "form").

Coarse-grained composition refers to business capabilities, encompassing all levels of the capability hierarchy (e.g. claims processing, payroll, computing a customer's mortgage interest, creating an invoice, or generating a list of a customer's overdue invoices).

The categorization of composition granularity categories may be considered artificial to some extent. For example, a very simple business capability might be regarded as a medium-grained composition, while a complex multi-level business information entity (e.g. "invoice") could be viewed as a coarse-grained composition. Thus, the terms fine, medium and coarse are relative.

Coarse-grained compositions are easier to use, but the finer the granularity, the higher the potential for reuse. Small, fine-grained compositions give much greater flexibility in assembling precisely the right combination of functionality and behavior, but they are more difficult to coordinate.

Clearly, the better an ICEE supports all granularity levels and empowers a business analyst to perform the act of composition across all kinds of compositions, the less the need to resort to traditional software development. In fact, a business analyst would be able to compose business capabilities of arbitrary complexity from components and compositions and create value streams. In other terms, the traditional "order-deliver model", meaning the business is "ordering" and IT is "delivering", would eventually become obsolete.

There are broadly two types of ICEEs: the Process-Oriented ICEE and the Pure-Play ICEE.

A Process-Oriented ICEE allows for the recursive composition of artifacts, particularly business services, which is also one of the most important features of service-oriented architecture (SOA). Developers can rapidly build new solutions based on the existing business services. The more individual business services (and their compositions) exist in a business service repository (BSR), the easier it becomes to implement new enterprise solutions.

Business data are not represented as components and compositions. Therefore, software developers need to implement data access logic. To make data access independent of persistence technology, developers may use technologies that allow heterogeneous data to be accessed in a uniform way, such as Service Data Objects (SDO).

Modern Business Process Management System (BPMS) products qualify as model-driven Process-Oriented ICEEs. These products enable business users to take an active role and participate in the process improvement life cycle. The act of composition in a BPMS begins and ends with the business process. Process compositions can be thought of as orchestrated assemblies of business services. Data access and other resource interactions are also performed by services, considering DBMSs and other resource management systems as service providers.

A Pure-Play ICEE relies on a well-defined composition architecture, that is a set of specifications used to describe and facilitate the composition of components and compositions regardless of granularity. It encompasses an assembly model and an implementation model. Compositions are assembled through the wiring of composition interfaces, although those interfaces are irrelevant for the composer (i.e. the business analyst). Compositions are executable, requiring an execution engine that interprets the composition meta data and any additional embedded programming logic.