Der Teufel steckt im Detail — the devil is in the detail, and in German it is a warning rather than an observation.
Ins Detail gehen — to go into the detail, said approvingly of a discussion that is doing its job.
Gründlich — going to the ground of a thing, the standard German word of praise for work.
Schlampig, oberflächlich, husch-husch — sloppy, superficial, hurry-hurry. Three dismissals, all of work that stopped before the detail.
Ohne Plan — without a plan, meaning aimless. Planlos — plan-less, an adjective applied to people, and an insult.
Er hat keinen Plan — he has no plan — is colloquial German for he has no idea. The word for a plan became the word for understanding.
Germany has an unusually loaded relationship with the word, given the twentieth century, and Planwirtschaft is used as a criticism of excessive central planning. The suspicion attaches to planning as an economic system. It does not attach to planning as professional practice, and Germans hold both views without difficulty.
Planungsvorlauf. Planning lead-time. German projects allocate a named period before execution begins, and it appears in the schedule as a phase with its own duration. Starting work before it has elapsed is a departure from the method, not an acceleration of it.
Plan ist Plan. Wir bleiben beim Plan. Das war so nicht geplant — that was not planned that way, said as an objection rather than as a description.
And the opposite: Wir fahren auf Sicht, we are driving by sight, used when the plan has been abandoned. It is never said with satisfaction.
Der Nachtrag. In German construction contracting, work beyond the agreed scope is handled through a supplement — priced, documented and agreed before it is carried out. Deviation from the plan is itself a contractual act with its own paperwork.
Der Änderungsantrag. A change to a German project plan goes through a formal request: what is to change, why, what it costs, what it moves, who approves. The plan can be changed. It cannot be drifted away from.
The German Institute for Standardization maintains tens of thousands of standards covering materials, processes, dimensions, testing, terminology and safety. A standard is a detail that has been settled once so that nobody has to settle it again, and Germany has settled a great many.
Das Grundbuch. The German land register records, for every parcel, the owner, the boundaries, the mortgages, the easements and the restrictions — maintained by the courts and legally authoritative. What is written there is what is true. The register is not evidence of the position. It is the position.
Netzplantechnik. Network planning technique. German project management teaches critical path analysis under its own name, with its own DIN definitions, as part of engineering and business curricula. The dependencies between tasks are modelled explicitly before the work starts.