1. A computerized method for asynchronously handling a faulting event for an activity of a workflow, said workflow being processed by a computing device, said method comprising: defining a state automaton for an activity, said state automaton including at least an executing state, a faulting state, and a closed state, said state automaton classifying an execution lifetime of the activity; defining the activity to include a plurality of work items, said defined activity having an execution hierarchy for the plurality of work items, each of the work items including an operation for executing a portion of the activity; transitioning each of the work items to the executing state; executing the included operation of transitioned work items in the executing state; receiving the faulting event associated with one or more work items; identifying the one or more of the transitioned work items in response to a fault-handling operation that handles the received faulting event as a function of the execution hierarchy and the included operation, wherein each of the identified one or more of the transitioned work items including the fault-handling operation therein; and asynchronously handling the faulting event by executing the fault-handling operation associated with the each of the identified one or more of the transitioned work items to the faulting state in response to the received faulting event and transitioning the one or more identified work items to the faulting state while executing the included operation of the remaining transitioned work items not identified in response to the faulting event, wherein the one or more identified work items in the faulting state are transitioned to the closed state after execution of the fault-handling operation is completed.