The current document is directed a distributed application in which a common configuration is maintained across the applications instances. In a disclosed example, a workflow-development-and-process-automation application is distributed across multiple discrete computer systems. In order for the applications instances to function symmetrically within the distributed application, the application instances share a common application configuration. The common configuration is maintained by an application-configuration synchronization subsystem that propagates configuration changes and that monitors the individual configurations of the application instances to ensure that they correspond to one another.