The owner, building occupants, and operation and maintenance personnel should be involved to contribute their understanding of how the building and its systems will work for them once they occupy it. People involved in the building design should interact closely throughout the design process. The 'whole building' design approach is intended 'to create a successful high-performance building.' To achieve that goal, we must apply the integrated design approach to the project during the planning and programming phases. Efficiencies gained by avoiding redesign and more redesign as requirements emerge during architectural design.

Emphasis on gathering and analyzing data early in the process so that the design is based upon sound decisions.

Involvement of interested parties in the definition of the scope of work prior to the design effort.

Now, several generations of architects have little familiarity with architectural programming and the advantages it offers: Programming and its attention to the users of buildings was not a priority. The emphasis of the Post-Modern and Deconstruction agendas was instead on form-making. In the 1980s and 1990s, some architectural schools began to drop architectural programming from their curricula. Their work was documented in Problem Seeking, the text that guided many architects and clients who sought to identify the scope of a design problem prior to beginning the design, which is intended to solve the problem.

Synonyms include 'facility programming,' 'functional and operational requirements,' and 'scoping.' In the early 1960s, William Peña, John Focke, and Bill Caudill of Caudill, Rowlett, and Scott (CRS) developed a process for organizing programming efforts. Today, we define architectural programming as the research and decision-making process that identifies the scope of work to be designed. In a way, archaeologists excavate buildings to try to determine their programs. Structures have always been based on programs: decisions were made, something was designed, built and occupied. Architectural programming began when architecture began.

Architecture program diagram graph