In this paper, we consider a two-stage tandem service system. The customers waiting in these two stages share one finite buffer. By constructing a Markov process, we derive the stationary probability distribution of the system and the sojourn time distribution. Given some constraints on the minimum loss probability and the maximum waiting time, we also derive the optimal buffer size and the shared-buffer size by minimizing the total buffer costs. Numerical results show that, by adopting the buffer-sharing policy, the customer acceptance fraction and the delivery reliability are more sensitive to buffer size comparing with the buffer-allocation policy.