Patent ID: 7885843

Claim:
A computer-implemented decision support method, comprising: determining, by a first computing device, availability of work items and areas of responsibility for a work in progress, the work in progress comprising the work items, each work item assigned to an area of responsibility and comprising at least one work item task, and each area of responsibility associated with at least one user; registering a feasibility filter with a feasibility framework implemented in the first computing device, the feasibility filter setting a threshold condition with respect to availability of an aspect of a work item; assigning at least one feasibility filter registered in the feasibility framework to an area of responsibility, each assigned filter designated as mandatory or optional; applying the at least one feasibility filter to the at least one work item task assigned to the area of responsibility, wherein the at least one work item task is feasible if the work in progress is available and resources needed to complete the at least one work item task are available in a quantity greater than specified in the at least one feasibility filter; determining feasibility of completing work item tasks by comparing an aggregated set of results of the application of the at least one feasibility filter to a customizable aggregation policy, wherein the completion of the work item tasks is feasible if the aggregated set of results meets criteria specified in the customizable aggregation policy; determining precedence of the work item tasks to be performed based on the determined feasibility, the determined availability of work items, and the determined areas of responsibility, said determining comprising: accessing a precedence profile that defines grouping procedures for grouping the work item tasks into groups and sorting procedures for sorting the grouped worked item tasks within each group; automatically grouping the work item tasks into the groups using the grouping procedures; responsive to said automatically grouping, automatically sorting the grouped work item tasks within the each group using the sorting procedures; and outputting, at a second computing device in communication with the first computing device, one or more worklists that list work item tasks to be performed based on the determined precedence and the determined feasibility of work item tasks.