Planning design processes in industry-initial observations

摘要

To assure the timely completion of a design project it is necessary to plan the design process. Design projects are riddled with uncertainty as requirements and resources change and unexpected problems occur during the design process. Yet design managers and practitioners need to plan their targets and day-to-day activities. This paper describes the planning practise in one engineering company. Rather then having one master plan of the design process many different plans existed in different units of planning depending on the needs of individuals. This resulted in a very hierarchical structure in the organisation of the project and a large number of meetings. Individual designers had little understanding how their tasks fitted into the context of the entire project and communication was seriously impaired.