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Dear Ranjit, Thank you for your question. When you talk about business processes, are you referring to processes involved in entrepreneurships (thinking up ideas for a business); strategy-making (working out ways to move forward with an entrepreneurial idea to maximise competitive advantage); operational planning (how a business process might operate - as in 'the person first talks to the operator and then is passed to the...'); business process management (mapping an idealised information and operational flow for a business); project planning (identifying resources and activities and decisions for a project); project management (the development of an optimal plan for the flow of resources and activities for a project and its real time management); day to day management of business; business processes associated with supply chains; business processes associated with business leadership..... ? Any potential roles for design thinking are different in each case and in some there is no role for design thinking. Some of the above are characterised by sequential 'linear' processes and some not. Typically, it is the ones that are not typified by sequential processes that design thinking does not apply. All of the above business processes involve, however, some form of design activity and most have different forms of well-established management processes. From observation, It is clear that the kind of thinking relating to design that is taught to designers in Art and Design schools may be appropriate to some tasks within the above. Design skills (i.e. ways of design thinking) taught in Art and Design schools apply, however, only to relatively simple design problems (hence the need for the category of 'wicked problems). For simple business problems, there is now evidence that Art and Design design thinking can offer benefits. For a lot of business contexts, however, situations are complicated. For these situations, it appears the design thinking skills taught in design schools are less well suited and can often be insufficient and problematic. For complex business situations involving multiple circular relationships between factors, it appears that 'design thinking' simply does not work. The above suggests that your quest to identify 'project management for including design thinking into business processes' does not have a singular solution and in many cases does not have any solution because 'design thinking' is inappropriate or will give faulty answers. Best wishes, Terry ____________________ Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI Senior Lecturer, Design Researcher, Social Program Evaluation Research Unit Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask] Senior lecturer, Dept of Design Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia Director, Design-based Research Unit, Design Out Crime Research Centre Member of International Scientific Council UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal Honorary Researcher, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK ____________________ -----Original Message----- From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of ranjit menon Sent: Monday, 3 October 2011 6:17 AM To: Dr Terence Love Subject: advice: project management tools for design thinkers? Hello Designers and Design Researchers, I am looking for an excellent project management software for designers. I am wondering if you all know any project management softwares (like Basecamp) that serve the need for design thinking in business? For instance, most of project management softwares are designed around the ontology of a linear business process, which usually means placing the cart before the horse for a designer. This is fair enough in group projects, since too much randomness and constant insights might work against deadlines, and design exploration never really ceases. However, for the project to follow a non-linear process, with support for visual thinking and integrative processes and reasoning, tools like Basecamp does not really serve the purpose. Or is it so that Project Management itself is a tool of "bounded rationality"? What project management tools do designers end up using nowadays, to be able to do the following: - Design thinking within linear project schedules? - Introduce non-linearity in a comprehensive way, to the "buzzwords oriented" business people who put emphasis on deadlines? - That "tracks" the illusion of a top down, mechanical metaphor approach but in the background allows bottom up design oriented approach? Is there such a *magic software tool* that will finally allow the designer to prove results within the world of mechanical metaphors of time and cost ie especially for designers to work with those kinds known as "project managers"? cheers, -- Ranjit Menon TAIK Helsinki