Patent ID: 8413150

Claim:
A method of managing data scopes in a flexible workflow, comprising: providing a baseline workflow as an electronic representation of an actual workflow, the baseline workflow including a plurality of baseline tasks, a plurality of data items, and a plurality of baseline data scopes that indicate which baseline tasks are able to manipulate which data items of the plurality of data items; providing a fragment workflow as an electronic representation of an actual fragment workflow, the fragment workflow being separate from the baseline workflow, representing a fragment of a process and including at least one fragment task, and at least one fragment data scope, the at least one fragment data scope indicating data items of the plurality of data items that are able to be manipulated by the at least one fragment task; generating an integrated workflow by: identifying at least one of the plurality of baseline data scopes as an affected data scope based on a structural change operation, the baseline workflow and the fragment workflow, the structural change operation changing a structure of the baseline workflow based on the fragment workflow, the affected data scope being a data scope that is affected by the structural change operation; for each affected data scope, comparing data items of the affected data scope to data items of the at least one fragment data scope; determining that an overlap in data items exists between at least one affected data scope and the at least one fragment data scope, and in response identifying at least one data scope change operation; integrating the fragment workflow with the baseline workflow based on the structural change operation to provide the integrated workflow; executing the at least one data scope change operation to provide at least one integrated data scope in the integrated workflow; and providing the integrated workflow for execution.