Best, most flexible way of presenting task progress

Question

In the world of business, one of the most common scenarios is having some sort of task system that has a natural business progression.

For example, someone at Department A initiates the task, it then appears on Department B's outstanding tasks list, indicating that someone there must action the task.

It then moves onto Department C and I believe you get the idea. I have seen stuff like this:

But this is sort of limiting, because I would like the UI to also handle what I call loop backs, when something is not right, and the task must go back to a previous Department to correct some error!

Can such a thing be done in a nice intuitive manner?

Any help, tips, advise would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You.

Answer 1

The progress is still linear, is it not?

[Dept A] - John initiates Task
         - John comments "lorme ipsum..."
         - Mike comments "I concur"
         - John moves Task to Dept. B
    ↓
[Dept B] - Sam has reviewed Task
         - Sam moves Task to Dept. C
    ↓
[Dept C] - Phil has not approved Task
         - Phil moves Task back to Dept. A
    ↓
[Dept A] - John has modified Task
         - John moves Task to Dept. B
    ↓
[Dept B] - Sam has reviewed Task
         - Sam moves Task to Dept. C
    ↓
[Dept C] - Phil has approved Task
         - Phil has marked Task complete
    ↓
[Task Complete]

With proper design the story of a task -- even with loop backs -- can still be told in a linear, historical manner.