A method for at least one of planning and configuring a project, which represents an automation device (4) for controlling a technical installation. The project data required for the at least one of planning and configuring the automation device (4) can be stored in an engineering system (2). The at least one of planning and configuring of the project is simplified by subdividing the project into a number of partial projects (Tp1, . . . ). The partial projects (Tp1, . . . ) are at least one of planned and configured on different programming units (13, . . . ) that are interconnected. Data records (18a, . . . ) are centrally stored that indicate which partial projects (Tp1, . . . ) are actively connected to which programming units (13, . . . ). These data records (18a, . . . ) can be read out by the programming units (13, . . . ).