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History of Project Management


Introduction  

The History of Project Management is the history of mega projects of the last 3000 years. These were not anomalies in history but projects delivered in a systematic approach with similar characteristics to today’s projects. Typically, they had a project charter, a business justification, followed a life-cycle of phases, incorporated Project Management Process Groups (initiating, planning, executing, and closing), and the nine PMBOK knowledge areas.
  

 


For most people the starting point in the history of Project Management is the Great Pyramid at Giza, a monumental structure for its time, 2550 B.C.E. The project conjures up images of thousands of slaves serving a merciless pharaoh and toiling in inhospitable conditions. Yet in reality labor was not an inexhaustible supply but came at a higher price. There is little evidence to suggest the use of slave labor, only in the Great Wall of China project (221 B.C.E. - 206 B.C.E.) was peasant labor used. For the next 2700 years most significant projects, highlighted by the architectural masterpieces of the Greek and Roman eras, were in the field of civil engineering and the creation of edifices and structures. Subtle changes were in the use of ever improving materials like brick, concrete, and iron which provided the project architects more design options and flexibility in the structure. These projects were made possible with the development of simple tools like wheels and levers, and wedges, around 3000 B.C.E.

 

Project management has existed in some form for thousands of years. After all anything that requires an approach where humans organize effectively to a plan and achieve specific objectives can be loosely defined as a project. How else would have humans achieved some of stunning wonders and achievements.  

 


The pace of development continued in and around the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Asia Minor, and the harnessing of animal labor in carrying materials. This led to projects like those that created the Roman Coliseum, 80 A.D.  The Romans were masters of Project Management in creating a massive building program across their empire that included roads, cities and towns, public buildings, and infrastructure (water and sewers). The collapse of the Roman Empire was a set back in Western Europe for over 600 years (Dark Ages), although projects continued to flourish in the Eastern Roman Empire, and Eastward across Asia.

 


In Western Europe there was not much activity till the 11/12th century in the medieval period which saw a massive building program of Gothic Cathedrals emerge in cities competing with each other for pilgrims. Through a period of several hundred years these projects strived to out do each other and entered a skyscraper race in creating the ultimate cathedral in splendor and height. In these years more stone was excavated than at any time in Ancient Egypt.

history of project management, giza pyramid 

 

 history of project management, great wall    

 

history of project management, colloseum of rome




Other types of projects flourished with the development of new technologies. The European Renaissance led to the great European Voyages of Exploration of the 15th century with advances brought about by grids/maps, astrolabe, compass, lateen sail, and improvements in ship building (Caravel).

 

In the last 400 years there was a further evolution in project types. This was first influenced by the First Scientific Revolution that provided important discoveries and inventions, and impacts on Western society. This spawned the first phase of Modern Engineering and its influence on Project Management, and led to the First Industrial Revolution and the monumentous changes brought about it.

 

By the end of the 19th century the newly industrialized world with mass production required a system to supply large quantities of raw materials, resources, man power, equipment and organization. It needed more sophisticated systems of transportation, storage, manufacturing, assembly, and distribution. Further a rapidly expanding workforce of thousands needed to be taken care of in terms of housing, health, welfare, and education. All this brought in new institutions, establishments, and organizations.

 

These colossal changes in the Western World along with the Second Industrial Revolution required a far more structured and disciplined approach to business and management, based on scientific research and principles, as the scale of objectives changed. With this came the birth of management principles in the business world, to become the backbone of project management, driven by a few key individual contributors in the field.

 

The First World War mobilized continents with huge armies and resources into a global conflict which proved to be a prolonged war of stalemate. It manifested the industrialization of war and leveraged mass production, mass transportation, and mass mobilization. By 1918 the logistical operation supplying the British Expeditionary Force was the largest the world had ever seen. This further accelerated work in planning and supplying.

 

Between the two world wars new disciplines were added to the study of business management notably, human relationships (between employer and employee), an evolution in marketing (and its importance) and industrial human relations school of management arose to deal with the practical problems caused by Taylorism and the grindless repetition of tasks. 

 

Project engineers developed or adapted coordination techniques that gave the managers control over the progress of the project but did not attempt to dictate to specialized experts how to do their work. MIT professor Erwin Schell articulated this philosophy, telling students in the 1930's:

 

"The work of the engineers in most departments is not sufficiently routinized to allow process control. The most satisfactory policy appears to be that of employing competent men and then holding them [responsible] for results in terms of the erection schedule, leaving ways and means largely to their individual discretion."

 

The Third Industrial Revolution, from 1940 to today, has been dominated by computers both electro-mechanical and electronic, information, and the Internet. It also saw the institutionalization of management practices into business. This was accelerated by the second world war which brought mega projects to the fore front. For example, the adaptive system created for the Battle of Britain (1940), the Collossus computers at Bletchley Park (1943), the Normandy Invasion (1944), and the Manhatten project (1945).   

 

The Cold War reflected the manifestation of the third industrial revolution and the advances made in the use of information/intelligence in the second world war . It also saw the development of a large number of planes and rockets projects by the US Air Force and Navy based on experiments and prototypes in the Second World War.

 

 

 

 

 

 Chartres Cathedral

Magellan's ships

history of project management, first industrial revolution driven by coal and steel

history of project management, The Second Industrial Revolution focused on electricity, chemicals, and piston engine


Modern Project Management

The form in use today across many fields and disciplines in the business world emerged in the 20th century specifically in around the Second World War through the mega projects that were required. This period can be looked as a catalyst in the evolution of project management with the need to organize vast quantities of resources and personnel to achieve critical objectives in specific timeframes. This required a comprehensive approach, beyond following intuitive processes (see Churchill's Adaptive Enterprise). The business world began to adopt project management as the benefits of organizing around projects became apparent.

 history of project management, Newcastel railway forge

Project Drivers
Over time the drivers for projects have included religious, political and commercial factors, and often a mix of these. Many ancient projects were driven by religion for example, construction projects like Giza, Stonehenge, and the Gothic Cathedrals, although the cathedrals improved the commerce in a town. Florence Cathedral was all about prestige and commerce. The Colosseum was political in nature and used to promote the Roman Government and provide employment. The great voyages of exploration were projects driven by commerce but in the name of religion and the monarchy. In the 18/19th century practically all projects in the industrial revolution were commercial in nature like the Iron Bridge, TransAtlantic cable, Crystal Palace, etc. Some projects were very strategic, and political, like the Suez and Panama canals, or the U.S., Canadian or Russian Transcontinental railways but, they were also very important commercial successes as well. In the 20th century public works projects emerged to address growth in unemployment like the Hoover Dam and Golden Gate Bridge in the U.S., Autobahns in Germany, Ocean liners (Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth) in the UK, and the Maginot line in France. But these projects were not much different from the Parthenon and Colosseum, 2000 years earlier, which were also major public works projects.

 history of project management, first industrial revolution factory system set up and mills

The Definition of Project management
The application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to a broad range of activities to meet the requirements of the particular project. For example, the use of methodologies, project life cycles and plans, and tools like Gantt and Pert charts.

  

Project management knowledge and practices are best described in terms of their component processes. These processes can be placed into five process groups (initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing) and nine knowledge areas (project integration management, project scope management, project time management, project cost management, project quality management, project human resource management, project communications management, project risk management and project procurement management).

The Term Project Management
The Latin word projectum means, "to throw something forwards." The word "project"  originally meant "something that comes before anything else is done". When the word was initially adopted, it referred to a plan of something, not to the act of actually carrying this plan out. Something performed in accordance with a project was called an object. This use of "project" changed in the 1950s when several techniques for project management were introduced: with this advent the word slightly changed meaning to cover both projects and objects. However in certain projects there may still exist so called objects and object leaders, reflecting the older use of the words.

Renaissance Engineers or Pseudo Project Manager
"The forerunners of engineers, practical artists and craftsmen, proceeded mainly by trial and error. Yet tinkering combined with imagination produced many marvelous devices. Many ancient monuments cannot fail to incite admiration. The admiration is embodied in the name “engineer” itself. It originated in the eleventh century from the Latin ingeniator, meaning one with ingenium, the ingenious one. The name, used for builders of ingenious fortifications or makers of ingenious devices, was closely related to the notion of ingenuity, which was captured in the old meaning of “engine” until the word was taken over by steam engines and its like. Leonardo da Vinci bore the official title of Ingegnere Generale. His notebooks reveal that some Renaissance engineers began to ask systematically what works and why."

Source: History of engineering; http://www.creatingtechnology.org/history.htm#1

 

"The first engineers were irrigators, architects, and military engineers. The same man was usually expected to be an expert at all three kinds of work. This was still the case thousands of years later, in the Renaissance, when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Dürer were not only all-around engineers but outstanding artists as well. Specialization within the engineering profession has developed only in the last two or three centuries."

Source: Paul Allen history of PM; http://members.aol.com/AllenWeb/history.html

 

The first project managers were technicians or engineers, generally multi-skilled generalists that could deal with many situations.

 

Beyond construction, typically in civil engineering, other types of projects drove the great technological advances and scientific discoveries. Also the great journeys across oceans and the world, or explorations to the far corners of the earth were all different forms of a project.

Villard_de_Honnecourt

Quarry

 

Submitted by admin on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 11:34