TY  - CONF
TI  - Project Definition and Wicked Problems
AU  - Whelton, Michael
AU  - Ballard, Glenn
AD  - Ph.D. Student, Construction Engineering & Management Program, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, USA, whelton@ce.berkeley.e
AD  - Adjunct Associate Professor, Construction Engineering & Management Program, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, USA, ballard@ce.berkeley.edu
ED  - Formoso, Carlos T.
ED  - Ballard, Glenn
PY  - 2002
DA  - 2002/08/06
T2  - 10th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction
C3  - 10th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction
CY  - Gramado, Brazil
SP  - 375
EP  - 387
AB  - It is now almost 30 years since Horst Rittel coined the term “wicked” for ill-defined problem sets which are too complex to be solved by rational systematic processes. To what extent today’s industry practice has adequately come to terms with such problems still remains open to discussion. This paper is concerned with team decision making during project definition, understood as the phase in which the design task is defined and its constraints are established sufficiently to launch design development. The concept of wicked problems is applied in an effort to improve project definition processes. Based on collaborative argumentation and reflection processes, a project learning model is proposed to better manage the resolution of wicked problems in project definition. Particular emphasis is placed on considering project definition as an adaptive process that incorporates project change through the co-evolution of problem formulation and solution generation.
KW  - Design management
KW  - organizational learning
KW  - project definition
KW  - stakeholder complexity
KW  - wicked problems.
L1  - https://www.iglc.net/papers/details/218/pdf
UR  - https://www.iglc.net/papers/details/218
DB  - IGLC.net
LA  - English
N1  - Export date: 04 October 2026
ER  -