Page 23 - Global Project Management Handbook

THE EVOLUTION OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT 1-5

Year 1863 Geo. Eliot Rhola Proem: “We Florentines were too full of great building
projects to carry them all out in stone and marble. . . .”
Year 1916 M. D. Snedden in School and Society 2:420, 1916: “Some of us began
using the word ‘project’ to describe a unit of educative work in which
the prominent feature was a form of positive and concrete achieve-
ment.”
From earliest recorded times, people have worked together toward designing and cre-
ating projects. Although the term project management did not come into wide use until
the 1950s, its history is much longer that the term itself.
This chapter is a step toward acknowledgment and a fuller appreciation of the role that
project managers and project teams have played throughout history in the evolution of
society. A study of projects of the past would include an assessment of the effectiveness
in management of the projects—as well as development of an informal “lessons to be
learned” profile in the conceptualization and completion of the projects. As an inventory
of these profiles is developed, our knowledge of what to do in managing contemporary
projects, as well as what to avoid, adds to our understanding of how project management
should be carried out in both the present and the future.
An early form of project management was used to plan for and use the resources
needed to deal with change. Only through studying the past can we fully perceive how
the world has been changed by projects. A study of these projects helps us to understand
how institutions have emerged and survived using a form of project management. Having
a knowledge and appreciation of past projects binds us to the present and the future. If we
do not learn from the past, we are condemned to make the same mistakes and pay for
those mistakes again.

TYPES OF EVIDENCE FOR HISTORICAL PROJECTS

A review of the results of projects in antiquity reveals evidence about how several histori-
cal projects originated and developed. The evidence takes three primary forms:

1. Artifacts—something produced by human workmanship, such as a tool, weapon, struc-

ture, or substance of archeological or historical interest. Examples include the Great
Pyramids and the printing press.
2. Cultural strategies—such as found in the arts, beliefs, institutions, and other products
of work and thought typical of a society at a particular time. Examples include the
English Magna Carta, the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation, and the U.S. Social
Security Program.
3. Literature and documents—publications and project-related documents that describe
project management and how it was used. Examples include books, articles, and edito-
rials that describe projects and the use of project management.
From the period circa 1950 to the present time, there is a growing abundance of arti-
cles, books, papers, and miscellaneous documentation that can be used to build a
contemporary model of project management. For the period prior to 1950 back through
antiquity, there is very limited documentation and literature. To understand how project
management emerged requires examination of the artifacts and the social, military, tech-
nological, political, industrial, and governmental strategies that existed. From study of
these areas, we may reach a judgment concerning the role of supporting projects. Then