Design in Programme Management
What happens when service design meets programme management cultures optimised for accountability and risk reduction? A series on translation, governance, boundary objects, and practical strategies for designers working within programme structures.
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- 1
Design in the Realm of Programme Management
December 18, 2025
Programme management in the public sector - and in the NHS in particular - is structured around accountability, milestone delivery, and risk reduction. These are not arbitrary cultural preferences;...
- 2
What Service Design Actually Offers Programme Management
January 5, 2026
The previous post established the epistemological tension between design and programme management: both orientations are legitimate responses to real constraints, but the culture that results from...
- 3
Translating Between Worlds: Boundary Objects in Programme Management
January 22, 2026
The previous post argued that service design offers programme management cultures three things they cannot generate from their own logic: the cross-cutting view, the surfacing of invisible decisions,...
- 4
Governance, Legibility, and What Programmes Cannot See
February 6, 2026
This series has been circling around the concept of governance for some time without confronting it directly. The first post described the epistemological tension between design and programme...
- 6
Working With the Grain: Practical Strategies for Designers in Programme Cultures
February 17, 2026
The preceding posts in this series have established a set of arguments: that many public sector programme management cultures are optimised for accountability and risk reduction, not hostile to...
- 7
Why Programme Cultures Neutralise Design
February 21, 2026
This post synthesises the literature on what happens when Design enters organisations governed through the programme management tradition - the stage-gate reviews, programme boards, benefits...
- 8
Bodies of Knowledge: Relationality and Norm-Critical Awareness
February 23, 2026
The Design in Programme Management series examines how designers navigate the institutional dynamics of programme-led organisations: the epistemological tension, the cross-cutting value proposition,...
- 9
The Value Hypothesis: Evidencing Design Impact in Governance Contexts
March 14, 2026
The previous post in this series discussed the claims that the designer's most distinctive contributions to programme cultures are relational, embodied, and normative: the capacity to work with...
- 10
What the Value Ontology Cannot See
March 14, 2026
The previous post in this series examined the product management ontology of design value - the causal chain from strategy through objectives to measurable behaviour changes - and asked what it...