A
process-centric approach has many benefits over alternative approaches. Since a
packaged application cannot sufficiently address the challenges raised by the
integration of business processes, the lack of a new enterprise software
infrastructure would require custom development involving traditional programming.
This would lead to the iterative development of an unnecessarily large amount
of code by software developers, based on specifications defined by software
architects, and according to models provided by business analysts.
Even
though this approach might be the most versatile, it has a major drawback:
software code does not directly reflect business processes, and thus becomes incredibly
difficult to maintain over time when these processes require modification. As
long as they remain internal to the enterprise, processes can be maintained by
carefully respected development methodologies. As soon as these processes span
multiple business partners however, traditional approaches simply can no longer
handle the complexity.
