Reflections on a Multimethodology Approach to Business Process Automation

Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) have the potential to reduce the effort required to provide technology support for business processes in an organization. Despite their relatively long history, however, there is currently no single development methodology recommended for their use in creating and maintaining Process-Aware Information Systems (PAIS). Instead, developers cur-rently take a multimethodology approach, drawing from a range of available paradigms, methodologies, techniques, and tools. The purpose of this paper is to consider whether an end-to-end methodology is needed for PAIS development or if multimethodology is sufficient. The discussion is informed by the specific experience of designing and building a PAIS for a telecommunications company in Ireland. The paper describes the study and the lessons learned from it, concluding that while an integrated methodology has benefits, a multimethodogy approach seems necessary until there is greater maturity in the BPMS field.