Perpustakaan Digital ITB

The escalating complexity of contemporary design projects has been the main reason behind the urgent demand for an innovative management approach to designing. The actual complexity of a design project results from the technical difficulty, the social difficulty, and the uniqueness of design. The technical difficulty is the logical consequence of the combination of different functions, forms, structures, procurement, and financial strategies in large-scale projects. The social difficulty is inevitable because of the involvement of a large number of stakeholders and participants with competing and incommensurable objectives. The uniqueness of design is reflected in the nature of the design problem, the design process employed in its solution, and the design practitioner. Most design problems are ill-defined, interconnecting many factors, and always in dynamic tension with the solutions. The design process is iterative, while the analysis often is done through synthesis. The design practitioners possess a unique competence for simultaneously reconstructing the problems and reframing the solutions. They work in knowledge intensive organizations that cannot be managed only by laying down rules and procedures, which Mintzberg calls “operational adhocracy.”