Unlike evolution, there are no natural, or inherent, characteristics of activities that determine their sensitivity to upstream changes in information. Rather, the results of the exploratory interviews
indicated that sensitivity was affected by the design situation. Design managers must be familiar with the specific project circumstances to be able to identify the sensitivity of activities. This type of “situational sensitivity” is also mentioned by Krishnan (1996) when he states that sensitivity is “dependent on internal factors such as the communication among engineers, anticipation of the downstream engineers, and the flexibility of the development methodologies used.” Interviewees in this study often cited the issue of design flexibility when discussing sensitivity characteristics.