Effective methods and methodologies for building information systems (IS) remain crucial to building successful IS. This paper investigates the use of situational method engineering for IS development (ISD) projects in a professional bureaucracy. This specialist organization methodology (SOM) is built starting with the philosophy of ISD moving through to flexible, amethodical implementation methods, a proposed instance of situational method engineering that is targeted towards professional bureaucracies. An in-depth philosophical discussion of the ontological, epistemological, research methodological and ethical underpinnings of SOM are outlined, in addition to its limitations, to develop the building blocks of a methodology to implement within a professional bureaucracy organization ISD scenario. Amethodical ISD will be introduced as the appropriate way to implement this developed methodology to build a successful IS. The contribution of this paper is to detail how to develop a philosophically consistent methodology for a specific organizational environment (in this case, using the specific organizational example of a professional bureaucracy) that, when combined with developers and tools, can create a method to be applied to build an IS that has a greater possibility of successful organizational adoption than an IS built using a method devised using more common IS method engineering approaches.
