The new stake in design today is to examine the global purpose of the design activities. In this perspective, project design management not only consists in allocating resources, but also in stimulating collaboration among the actors involved in the project. Objective is to increase the performance of design teams. In this paper, we are particularly interested in the factors influencing performance of the design process. We identify the elements of the design performance and the need for a framework to manage design activities. A modelling of design context is also provided to manage design process. An application to an industrial case is then studied through the use of software formalising the exchanges during a real design process.