Patent ID: 7418306

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for managing a process including sequential actions, comprising: dividing the process into a sequence of stages, wherein each stage in the sequence of stages includes a plurality of sequential actions and an escalation policy specifying how to notify each dependent stage of the stage upon occurrence of a particular event in the stage, including specifying whether and when to notify each dependent stage; defining dependency among the sequence of stages, wherein a second stage is a dependent stage of a first stage if the second stage can only be executed after the first stage, and wherein a stage is an initial stage of the sequence of stages if the stage depends on no other stages in the process; customizing the stages, including specifying an owner of the stage and a stage type of the stage, each stage type being associated with a dynamic sub-object used to customize the stage; and executing the stages in sequence, wherein executing the stages includes (a) executing a current stage in the sequence of stages; (b) re-executing all stages in the sequence of stages, if the current stage is not successfully executed; (c) setting a dependent stage as a new current stage if the current stage is successfully executed and repeating (a)-(c) for each dependent stage of the current stage.