Managing Design

CHAPTER 23Understanding and Using the Framework

Order and Logic: “Visual Onomatopoeia”

Think of the PDC management framework in stages, in the order and logic of construction. This thematic approach draws on familiar patterns, a “visual onomatopoeia” for designing and building, a metaphor with meaning, an allegory to construction.

• Level 0 forms the “Subsurface,” the formation of the team, their duties and contracts into which the other levels are built.
• Level 1 lays the “Foundation,” the planning and organizing activities that support the management structure.
• Level 2 builds the “Structure,” the columns and beams that frame the house: program, budget, scope, schedule, and documents.
• Level 3 roughs in the “Systems,” the human, relational aspects that power the project's management system. The things with complex moving human parts that make design management run: trust, relationships, and collaboration.
• Level 4 adds the “Enclosure,” that protects the project from stormy weather and keeps its occupants safe: issues tracking, decisions, critical thinking, coordination, and completion.

Within each of these levels, touch on their five checkpoints – a total of twenty-five things to consider, cycling through each quickly to ensure it's in place and aligned.

Too Simple? Change It

Design managers who think this management “playhouse” overly simplistic or a trope are welcome to view it under some other mental model, work intuitively, or use another method, but they should use its ...