The paper uses object based models to capture and make visible the system level coordination structure of complex projects. These models facilitate the development of a shared view necessary for effective project management. In the paper, development and use of the models are illustrated using examples drawn from the design of custom silicon. We examine three custom silicon design projects to identify the significant coordination problems encountered as well as the difficulties of using activity based project management tools. Then we develop object based models of coordination structure as a tool to overcome these difficulties. We use these models to capture a project manager's view of the four stages of the custom silicon design cycle: design definition, chip design, prototype manufacture, and system integration. We conclude by discussing the relationship between the coordination structure approach and other project management tools, and the managerial advantages of the proposed approach in the management of projects. Because of their simplicity and stability, coordination structure models form a useful front-end for conventional activity based project management. The approach has particular value for the management of projects in which the task structure is complex, uncertain and unstable, as is typically the case in new product development.

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Despite all best efforts, the design process often leads to the introduction of products that do not meet customer expectations. Although the design team typically applies customer‐related information from several sources, the product design somehow fails to satisfy customer requirements. Clearly, we need to develop a better understanding of the process by which designers in large development organizations transform information about customer requirements into the final design specification. To improve our understanding of this process, Antonio J. Bailetti and Paul F. Litva examine design managers' perspectives on the sources of customer requirement information. During the evolution of a product design, the design team applies information that is endorsed by marketing and product management. Common sources of such information include commercial specifications, inferences from existing products and services, deployment studies, and external standards. When this management‐endorsed information is deemed inadequate, designers supplement it by creating and sharing their own customer‐related information. This local information includes the results of benchmarking function and performance, the designers' perceptions of a service provider's installed base of equipment, and validations of intermediate designs. Marketing and product management cannot easily review the local information that designers create and share in evolving a final design. This article highlights the importance of creating mechanisms for ensuring that customer requirement information from various sources is internally consistent. To meet this goal of consistency, organizations must ensure that customer requirements information produced by marketing satisfies the information processing requirements of the design community. In addition, the knowledge that designers actually apply to produce a design must incorporate customer requirement information endorsed by marketing and product management at all stages of product development.

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A s the pace and breadth of technological progress increases around the world, companies both large and small are forming international collaborative arrangements as the basis for developing competitive advantage from technology. Management of these arrangements requires the creation and maintenance of a wide variety of strategic and operational interdependencies within and between companies. The paper introduces a method for developing a representation leading to a system level understanding of the coordination structure of international collaborative arrangements. The method is based on recent advances in coordination theory and object oriented domain analysis. We apply the method to represent four international collaborative arrangements. The representations that result are then used as data to identify five basic modules of the coordination structure of international collaborative arrangements: strategic management, intra-firm management, joint management, technology exchange and customer interaction. The proposed method leads to increased organizational learning of the goal oriented coordination processes for which managers are responsible when establishing international collaborative technology arrangements.