SOFTWARE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT AND PRACTICE Softw. Process Improve. Pract. 2007; 12: 51–63 Published online 17 October 2006 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/spip.304 A Benchmarking Framework for Methods to Design Flexible Business Processes Research Section Feriel Daoudi 1 * ,† and Selmin Nurcan 1,2 1 Centre de Recherche en Informatique, University Paris 1 Panth´ eon-Sorbonne, 90, rue de Tolbiac, 75634 Paris Cedex 13, France 2 IAE de Paris, Sorbonne Graduate Business School, University Paris 1 Panth´ eon-Sorbonne, 21, rue Broca 75005, Paris, France The assumption made in this article is that flexible processes require specific design methods. The choice of a method for modelling flexible processes depends on many criteria and situations that we gathered in a benchmarking framework. The user can use it as a decision support tool to choose the appropriate method in order to design flexible business processes in a given project situation. This framework also includes managerial concerns such as the time and the budget of the project. We use three enterprise modelling techniques to illustrate how to use the proposed framework. Copyright  2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY WORDS: flexibility; business processes; methods’ benchmarking; investment; time 1. INTRODUCTION The flexibility of business processes depends on the way they are modelled and managed. Indeed, the monitoring of business processes can be facilitated by the use of adequate modelling techniques. The best way, from our point of view, is to cover the modelling of those processes from the organizational objectives they allow to be attained to the software components that support them (in a top-down, bottom-up or mixed way). This way of thinking is partially adopted by software publishers providing a panoply of tools to analyze and model enterprises in a global and coherent way. It also underlies Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) * Correspondence to: Feriel Daoudi, Centre de Recherche en Informatique, University Paris 1-Panth´ eon-Sorbonne, 90, rue de Tolbiac, 75634 Paris Cedex 13, France † E-mail: Feriel.daoudi@malix.univ-paris1.fr Copyright  2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. solutions that aim to integrate applications in order to avoid discontinuity in business processes they support. Today, many enterprises tend to adopt a ‘knowl- edge management’ perspective and store their pro- cess models in process warehouses in order to use them as a means to monitor their business pro- cesses and to relate them to their organizational structures and perspectives. It seems obvious that some evolution of processes can be simulated on the enterprise models stored in those business process warehouses. In order to stimulate organizations to use the knowledge management perspective to face the changes that they undergo, managers must be convinced about the benefits of this choice. In fact, this requirement represents a strong investment in human and financial resources. Actually, stakehold- ers often doubt the usefulness of business process modelling. Two factors impact the decision of stake- holders/managers. The first one is the time spent on the project before getting the first satisfying result.