Patent ID: 7930268

Claim:
A method for implementing a workflow, said workflow dividing a general work task of an enterprise into activities and associated relationships with respect to a plurality of participating roles in the workflow, said method comprising: generating a checklist file for each participating role, each checklist file stored in a first database, each checklist file specifying activities of each participating role and at least one relationship element for each activity of each participating role, wherein the at least one relationship element of a first activity in the checklist file of a first participating role of the plurality of participating roles comprises a dependency relationship selected from the group consisting of a one to many relationship, a many to one relationship, and a many to many relationship; generating a plurality of checklist instances, each checklist instance being stored in a second database, each checklist instance corresponding to an associated checklist file and recording a status of each activity and of each relationship element in the associated checklist; receiving a request from the first participating role to participate in execution of the workflow; responsive to the request, retrieving from the second database a first checklist instance corresponding to the checklist file of the first participating role and presenting the retrieved first checklist instance to the first participating role; after detecting that the first participating user has indicated having completed execution of the first activity in response to said presenting, updating the first checklist instance in the second database; and after said updating the first checklist instance, implementing each requirement of the dependency relationship, wherein the dependency relationship is selected from the group consisting of a one to many relationship, a many to one relationship, and a many to many relationship.