# Activity design indicates how power and coordination are distributed Activity design is the process of setting goals, milestones, and plans for core research activities, and then then *ongoing process* of revising them throughout the course of the core activity. [[Research organizations have core activities that act as discrete units]]. Any of these core activities have plans, goals, and milestones. Of course, these three factors can vary wildly in timescale and concreteness, from “lost in the fog” explorations that can take years and you can’t say much up front besides “we’re going to try some stuff”, to bright critical paths to quantifiable goals. Whenever one of these activities is spun up, some amount of “design” goes into it to answer questions like “what are the goals and intermediate milestones?” “Who will do the work?” “How much will it cost” “what are the subactivities” etc. The precision and thought that goes into each of these questions is as different as core activities themselves. It’s important to note that activity design has both an up-front component and a continuous component — as the poet Mike Tyson put it: “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” The dynamics of program design can change significantly depending who is involved in updated plans: if a large group or multiple levels of a hierarchy are involved in the original design and *also* design updates (as is often the case) it can create very different dynamics from an activity whose design can be updated on the fly by a single person (say, the grad student working on a project). A lot of activity design is implicit — the program officer evaluating a professor’s grant application to start a project is participating in the design even if they simply say yes or no. More broadly, all stakeholders — people who can prevent an activity from going forward — are involved in activity design whether it’s explicit or not. Some important questions to ask about an activities design process? * How many people, organizations, and levels of hierarchy are involved in the initial design? In updating it? * Are the people doing the work involved in the program design? How much? * Does the majority of the design happen up front or during the activity? ### Related * [[Activity Space]] * [[There is some connection between the rate of feedback loops in activity design and the uncertainty associated with the critical path of the activity]] * [[Research organizations have core activities that act as discrete units]] * [[A list of Knowledge generating activities]] * [[A taxonomy of research organizations and activities]] * [[Many knowledge generating activities are inherently illegbile]] * [[Research management matters]] * [[Vision is not enough]] [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Activity+design+indicates+how+power+and+coordination+are+distributed) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Activity+design+indicates+how+power+and+coordination+are+distributed)