It will be helpful if you can provide a little more information. NullPointerException is too common and generic to come to any conclusion. Please provide the jbpm.cfg.xml, a snippet of the jpdl and a snippet of your code to execute that. Typically processEngine.getIdentityService() should give you the indentity service. View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4269175#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...