I think I have answered my own question. What wfenthusiast told me to do works fine - if there is at least one variable in the process instance. If there are not any variables, then the map seems to come back null (rather than an empty Map). This seems like a defect to me... but since the method isn't really documented it is not clear what the expected behavior is. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4050513#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...