Planning

1. Action on the environment for the purpose of changing it in such a way that tendencies toward coherence and cohesion are enhanced and tendencies toward distintegration and dissolution are kept under check; namely, it is a process whose function is to reduce entropy and increase organization within the environment.

2. A goal-directed decision-making process.

3. The formalization of factors involved in determining the goals and the establishment of the decision processes to achieve these goals.

4. The systematic enrichment of the information base for decision-making (pointing out consequences for the future of alternative courses of action taken in the present, and consequences for present action of alternative goals in the future).

5. The process of developing a complex dynamic system designed in the form of a controlling event-structure whose function is to effect in its environment (which is another complex dynamic system), the kind of organized change which current values define as progress.

6. The process of making, changing, or coordinating plans which are sequences of future actions to which a person, unit or organization is committed.