we have various stages in our sales process, however some of the stages are non linear, in other words the order in which they are done does not matter.

I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for tracking them, and making sure all per-requisite steps are completed by the necessary stage,

For example say I have a pipeline like this:

1(QualifyLead)->2(Needs Analysis)->3(Generate Quote)->4(x)->5(y)->6(final sales meeting scheduled)->7(Quote-Deliver) -> 8(Won/Lost Deal)

And steps  4, 5, 6 are not order dependent.  Nothing is saying they can't be done as 6,5,4.  We often schedule the final sales meeting while there are still outstanding tasks knowing that they will be done before the meeting, or we postpone the final meeting.   For example maybe we need an NDA signed, but we don't really care when it's signed as long as it's done before the presentation meeting.

Perhaps i'm using pipelines wrong, making "signed nda" as a pipeline stage?  Or we're being too granular?