In today's global economy, it is supply chains that compete, not companies: a notion whereby company success is measured as a function of supply chain efficiency. The route to competitive advantage therefore lies in integrating the supply chain. As a result of this, supply networks are being reshaped into various types of supply chain communities that tend to adopt generic business strategies in order to more effectively serve the end customer. The paradigm shift from competition to collaboration has been enabled by the explosive growth of the Internet. This has transformed the traditional economy into a network and knowledge base economy. E-commerce has assumed an increasingly important role in reshaping supply chain partner relationships by improving core business processes, providing electronic intermediation, and enabling a greater degree of integration. Portal technologies have emerged as a solution to integrating the supply chain. Key to developing successful supply chain community portal solutions is the information system development methodology employed throughout the system development life cycle. The research gives new insight into how supply chain communities can deliver portal solutions that integrate supply chain partners and drive the development of the supply chain to achieve the competitive advantage that is key to any organisation sustaining success. The large body of literature investigated considers the areas of supply chain management, supply chain management information systems, and information system development methodologies. This identified the research need and helped formulate the methodology thinking which was further developed and enriched through a series of pilot case studies. The output from this activity provided the foundations for the proposed methodology. The methodology not only prescribes the phases and steps necessary to design a portal tailored to the supply chain community requirements, but also enables a development approach that is cost effective and efficient, exploiting the opportunity to outsource development to emerging economies. This was then applied to two final case studies in which the solutions were implemented by the case communities validating the methodology and allowing conclusions to be drawn. The contribution to knowledge from the research is an agile design methodology that compliments and furthers current agile methodology thinking for a distributed approach to system development in an e-business environment.