We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
The History of Project Management (Lessons from History)
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About The History Of Project Management
From the Author Background to this Publication This has been a massive undertaking for me personally, and for the Lessons From History Series. The story started somewhere between the publication of my books on the Titanic project (2005) and The Great Escape (2006). I was reviewing the approach to Project Lessons from the Great Escape (Stalag Luft III) with my publisher Kevin Aguanno (at Multi-Media Publications). He had challenged me to take a more rigorous approach that looked at the story line through the lens of a modern project manager, and hence the idea came about of looking at the event from each of the PMBoK® Guide's nine knowledge areas. This provided an approach that we could now use with the latest planned publichation The History of Project Management Initially, I had difficulty getting started because the subject was so daunting. Also, there wasn't much information readily available with no known books or research on the topic. It looked as if few had ever tried to research the history of projects from a project management perspective. Of course there were plenty of books that concentrated on the outputs or the final deliverables of ancient projects, but the authors focused on architecture or engineering practices. These books were rooted in the technicalities of the achievement, the aesthetic splendour of the output, or an architectural examination of the form. There were few references to how the projects were initiated, planned, and executed. My first major task was to narrow the scope of the book into something that was manageable. Choosing a starting point was relatively easy: the Giza Pyramid. The end point, however, was more difficult. The decision was made to take it into the modern era, but not to today. There were too many twists and turns in the second half of the twentieth century. In fact, WW2 was a catalyst for many landmark projects, so ending in 1940 made a lot of sense. The second major task was to select a number of projects from across the 4,500 years time frame. We set the criteria for these; namely, they had to be a first of a kind, extremely influential on projects that followed, and had to meet the nine PMBoK® Guide knowledge areas. In the end, this proved to be far easier than expected. I'll let you discover the selected projects in the book, and how they mapped to the nine knowledge areas. The general perception of most people is that project management started in the mid-20th century, or started earlier with Henry Gantt and his charts. That is the impression I got from talking to many project managers. Yet, how were all the great projects of the past delivered? Think about the Giza Pyramid, the Parthenon, the Colosseum, the Gothic Cathedrals of Medieval Europe, the great voyages of exploration, the Taj Mahal, and the mega projects of the industrial revolutions. Was project management used on these projects? Were the concepts of project management even understood? Can we connect modern and ancient project management? If you answered "yes," then how do we prove this? Conventional wisdom around 30 years ago viewed dinosaurs as slow lumbering creatures. The name Tyranosaurus (meaning "terrible-lizard") evokes images of a large, cold blooded reptile that lived in a hot tropical climate. This view was initiated by Richard Owen 130 years earlier. Fast forward to today and conventional wisdom views dinosaurs as agile, warm-blooded creatures, closer to birds than reptiles, that lived in the extremes of hot and cold climates. What caused this shift in views? What has changed in 30 years? You could argue the shift was caused by the influx of new technologies such as X-ray computed tomography, computer generated imagery with biomechanical simulations, and comparative anatomy with modern animals. The biggest change, however, was reviewing the known evidence more carefully, objectively and logically. Similarly, misperceptions about project management are changing through taking a fresh look at the
