Patent ID: 6023572
Filing Date: 2000-02-08
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
A computer implemented method for modeling activities of people in an organization, comprising:establishing definitions of processes performed by people of the organization;establishing definitions of data elements generated from the processes by the organization;establishing definitions of relationships between the data elements and the processes, wherein a relationship definition symbolizes a data element provided by a process and required by another process;displaying the processes as nodes on a graph and the data elements as directed edges connecting nodes;establishing definitions of events, wherein occurrence of an event results in initiation of a process and selected ones of the event definitions include criteria attributes characterizing criteria that must be met in order to transition from a first process to a second process and failure attributes defining a deviation path to follow if the criteria are not met, the deviation path including a group of associated events and processes at which the deviation path begins and ends;establishing definitions of groups of events that are associated with paths between the processes, wherein a path includes a process at which the path begins, another process at which the path ends, and a set of one or more associated events; anddisplaying, responsive to an input selection signal, a selected one of the paths, wherein processes in the path are depicted using a predetermined shape, and events in the path are depicted as directional lines that interconnect the processes and have an order of presentation that indicates a chronological relationship between the events.