Analysis of collaboration for project design management

Project design management not only consists in allocating resources, but also in stimulating collaboration among the people involved in the project, in order to increase performance of design teams. This paper presents an analysis of the type of collaboration that could be introduced into the design process in order to set up and manage an appropriate design environment and thus facilitate the designers’ task. Various design models and methods are presented to describe the work carried out by the different members of the design team. An analysis of collaboration mechanisms in design teams enables a collaboration taxonomy to be proposed. As design project unfolds, project manager must be able to analyse each design situation in order to encourage the emergence of a new collaboration situation by creating a suitable design environment. Models to describe a design situation and therefore a design environment are proposed here. Finally, the possibilities available to the project manager for meeting the project aims are described based on expectations in terms of collaboration.