A Common Process Methodology for Engineering Process Domains

Process engineering involves a search for new models of organising work. This synthesis task can become quite di cult and time-consuming as the amount of detail required and interactions between activities increases. Domain independent AI planning o ers some promising techniques and representations to assist in this e ort. One of the major impediments to transferring this technology to applied, real-world settings is the di culty encountered in building the domain model which is used in the automated generation of these plans. Competence, as well as good tools, is necessary to carry out this task. A plan domain methodology should be available which provides structured organisational development activities. Users need to know what tasks they have to perform: for each step, information must be available about what input will be needed, and what output will be required, what is to be done and how it can be done well. This paper presents the Common Process Methodology (CPM) which aims at providing this support for engineering process domains.