ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the way in which ethnomethodology has attempted to deal with the issue of the 'plan'. Controversy over the necessity of plans is evident in stances to be found in cognitive psychology and against which ethnomethodology typically positions it. Planning systems were expected to produce the best strategies as well as step-by-step instructions for carrying out those strategies so that the doers, the managers of businesses, could not get them wrong. A classic attempt was made by Lucy Suchman in her book, Plans and Situated Actions. Ronkko et al show, in a study of project management encountered in distributed software engineering, how documentation is used planfully in order to coordinate activities between representatives of different organizations. Planning and plans in software engineering are used to cope with complex tasks, allowing members to coordinate different activities across time and space in order to produce something which will be accepted as 'achieving a common goal'.
