Lnbip 105 Design of Enterprise Information Systems: Roots, Nature and New Approaches

Technical Disciplines 
Each design effort draws on contributions from a number of different disciplines, for 
example IT, electronics, mechanics, city planning, materials, and production. Each 
discipline has its own concepts, theories, methods, as well as standards for good 
professional practice. To a large extent this determines the phases of a design process. 
Not neglecting this technical and professional foundation for design, it is however 
a challenge to find a way of integrating them into a combined process, which may be 
considered the core of a design effort, to be discussed in the next section. 
Project Management 
The field of project management has experienced a development parallel to design. 
Essentially, project management is concerned with the planning and organization of 
an effort to solve complex tasks. This also includes design activities. 
In the 70s and 80s, project management focused on engineered facilities as well as 
product and systems design. Due to its success of introducing a new mode of 
organizing and managing teams cutting across departmental boundaries of the 
traditional hierarchical organizational structure, project management was also applied 
to other types of tasks; for example the introduction of new management methods, 
e.g. Total Quality Management, Total Productive Maintenance, Lean Thinking, many 
of which stem from Japan. 

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6 J.O. Riis 
In recent years, project management has been applied to organizational 
development in an effort to increase productivity, globalize its operation, and 
cooperate with other companies on new business models. This has drawn attention to 
the inclusion of behavioral elements, such as the creation of ownership, visualization 
of prototypes and dealing with stakeholders, cf. [21]. 
The parallel development of design and project management holds potential for a 
coordinated effort to exploit synergies.