ABSTRACT
Planning is primarily a mental activity; we do it with our minds. The mind has a generalized way of thinking, diagnosing, planning and if we work with it, we get a generalized masterguide for planning any project. Dick Muther has spent more than six decades and 2000 projects distilling his systematic planning processes, named Planning by Design (PxD) methodology. PxD has three masterguides—short form, full, and extended—one for each general size of project. PxD provides a general planning masterguide that identifies a way to plan the planning for any definable subject area as a project, from designing a manufacturing cell, to creating an office layout, to planning a family vacation, to planning a career, and so on. The essence of PxD is that the planner applies a working model for the subject area of the project at hand. Finding the key fundamentals in a particular area, topic, or discipline can be one of the most interesting challenges of planning.
