Page 25 - Global Project Management Handbook

THE EVOLUTION OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT 1-7

written documentation, but the artifacts remain today in some state. In these cases,
descriptions provided in the anthropologic, archeologic, and other historical literature can
supply some insight into how and why these projects were accomplished.
Perhaps the earliest publication on the management of projects appeared in 1697,
entitled An Essay Upon Projects, authored by Daniel Defoe, who had an interesting
comment on the building of the Ark:

The building of the Ark by Noah, so far as you will allow it human work, was the first
project I read of; and no question seem’d for it, and had he not been set on work by a very
peculiar Direction from Heaven, the Good old Man would certainly have been laugh’d out
of it, as a most senseless ridiculous project [p. ii ].

Some additional comments Defoe made regarding projects include

● “Every new Voyage the Merchant contrives is a Project” (p. 8).
● “After the Fire on London, the contrivance of an Engine to Quench Fires, was a Project
the Author was said to get well by, and we have found to be very useful” (p. 25).
● “The project of the Penny-Post, so well known, and still prais’d . . .” (p. 27).
● “And to Dedicate a Book of Projects to a Person who had never concern’d himself to
think that way, would be like Music to one that has no Ear” (p. ii ).
Defoe identifies in 1697 the dilemma still facing contemporary managers: how to
design and implement project management concepts and philosophies.
Mary Parker Follett, writing in 1920, extolled the benefits of teams and participa-
tive management and said that leadership comes from ability rather than hierarchy.
She advocated empowerment, drawing on the knowledge of workers, and supported
the notion of the formation of teams through cross-functions in which a horizontal
rather than a vertical authority would foster a freer exchange of knowledge within
organizations.
A 1959 article that caught the attention of the growing project management com-
munity was authored by Paul Gaddis, entitled “The Project Manager,” and published
in the Harvard Business Review. It described the role of an individual in an advanced-
technology industry who functioned as a focal point for the management of resources

being applied to manage ad hoc activities across organizational boundaries.
Another contribution to the emerging theory and practice of project management,
entitled “Functional Teamwork,” appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 1961,
authored by Gerald Fish. He described the growing trend in contemporary organiza-
tions toward functional-teamwork approaches in organizational design.
Professor John F. Mee, a noted scholar in the history of management theory and
practice, published an article in Business Horizons in 1964 that described the charac-
teristics of the “matrix organization.” He described one of the key characteristics of
this approach as an organizational system that created a “web of relationships” rather
than a line and staff relationship of work performance.
David I. Cleland and William R. King published Systems Analysis and Project
Management (New York: McGraw-Hill) in 1968. This book was the first scholarly
work on project management cast in the context of the emerging “systems approach”
in management theory and practice.
Since these landmark documents were published, a host of publications has
appeared each year. Amazon.com lists more than 2300 books for sale in 2005, and this
number does not include books that are out of print. It is estimated that more than 500
project management books are published each year in the United States in the English