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Reflections on a Multimethodology Approach to Business Process Automation

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Information Systems Development

Abstract

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 currently take a multimethodology approach, drawing from a range of available paradigms, methodologies, techniques, and tools. The purpose of this chapter 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. This chapter describes the study and the lessons learned from it, concluding that while an integrated methodology has benefits, a multimethodology approach seems necessary until there is greater maturity in the BPMS field.

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Acknowledgements

This work was completed through an IntertradeIreland FUSION project between KTL Ltd. and the University of Ulster. Thanks are extended to colleagues who were involved in the project: Kevin Curran at Ulster and Niall Byrne at KTL.

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Correspondence to Helena McCabe .

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McCabe, H., Bustard, D., O’Sullivan, P. (2013). Reflections on a Multimethodology Approach to Business Process Automation. In: Pooley, R., Coady, J., Schneider, C., Linger, H., Barry, C., Lang, M. (eds) Information Systems Development. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4951-5_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4951-5_7

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