Practice Management

One of the biggest prejudices against project management processes is the belief that "you can't manage design".  The thinking is that there is no process by which project parameters are fed into the hopper at the beginning of the process and great design is churned out at the other.

One of my Architectural Basic Design courses required us to read The Universal Traveler, by Don Koberg and Jim Bagnall.  The book is an essay on the design process, which it defined as a series of sequential events:

1. Accept Situation – to accept the problem as a challenge
2. Analyze – get to know the ins and outs of a problem
3. Define – decide what we believe to be the main issue of the problem
4. Ideate – search out all the ways of possibly getting to the major goal
5. Select – determine the best way to go
6. Implement – give action to our selected “best way”
7. Evaluate – determine the degree of progress of our design activity

Feedback is also discussed as a part of the design process, where one event in the design process is also used to check on the validity of assumptions made in the previous event.  In this the process of design is iterative - the design keeps getting modified (and improved) as ideas are selected, implemented, and tested.  It is hard to formulate this type of work - sometimes a design problem requires finding the solution that is least objectionable.

But if we look at managing the project, not just the design phase, we see a series of processes to be followed.  The Project Management Institute publishes A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, now in its fourth edition, that lists project management processes as follows:

1. Initiate – this process defines the project, the stakeholders, and the resources required to complete the project.
2. Plan – this process further defines the work to be done, processes to be used, and determine a course of action to carry out the objectives of the project.
3. Execute – this process implements the project management plan, including staffing, scheduling, cost control, quality control, and risk management.  It may require that adjustments are made to the project plan.
4. Monitor – the process that monitors the work on the project, such as scope of work, conformance to schedule, cost and quality control, and forecasts whether the project will meet its objectives.
5. Close – the process of obtaining client approval of the project, reviewing lessons learned, and closing the project down.

Our design phases typically fall under the Initiate and Plan processes, with some work in the Execute process.  The more design work that can be done under the Planning Process means a simpler, more direct execution of the work in a later process.  When the work is being executed the majority of design decisions should have already been made.  In house staff and consultants should be clear on scope of work and how it is to be accomplished.  Coordination and quality control then become a lot simpler, avoiding the chaos of half finished changes made during the documentation phase.