Today is our professional holiday. It is the International Project Management day. Do you know, where the project management has come from and how the story has begun?
Every first Thursday of November the Project Management community is celebrating their professional holiday. This day was officially established in 2004 by Laverne Johnson (Founder & CEO) and Lori Milhaven (Executive VP) of the IIL (International Institute of Learning). They together with the men and women team set up this holiday.
I believe, they understand the huge effort and contribution that the project managers bring. This is a worldwide recognition of our profession. It states of the PM role importance throughout the industries and environments.
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Ancient Story
As you know, project management is generic and multi-applicable. Did you know that project management is as antique as the most famous pieces are?
Check also my article ‘Who the Project Managers are?‘ for more details about these guys.
To begin with, let’s look at the ancient centuries and remember the world famous monuments. Yes, I’m talking about the Great Chinese Wall, the constructions of the Great Roman Empire, the Pyramids and other World Wonders. Almost all of them we build by a dozen or hundreds of people and the constructions lasted many years. These were the greatest projects and programs! Of course, they were managed by people, by the first project managers.
On a high-level let’s see how the project management study has been developing through centuries with great openings and innovations. Here are some important pin-points in the Project Management history.
XIX CENTURY
1880s. The arch-father of the project management tools was Frederic Winslow Taylor with his theories of the scientific management. His work was a forerunner to the modern Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and Resources Allocation.
The Work Breakdown Structure itself was represented later by the United States Department of Defense (DOD) in 1962.
XX CENTURY
1917. The great founder of the project management studies was Hanry Gantt, the author of the magnificent GANTT CHART.
1956. The Waterfall methodology was presented by Herbert D. Benington describing the use of such phases in software engineering at the Symposium on Advanced Programming Methods for Digital Computers.
1957. Further on, a Critical Path Method(CPM) was developed by the Dupont Corporation. Initially it was intended to be applied to the plant maintenance projects.
1958. The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) a statistical tool for project management was invented by the US Navy. It was designed to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project.
A little bit of theory…
Although CPM & PERT have some common in their approach, they still differ and applicable to different type of projects. While the Critical Path methodology assumes that the duration of tasks is determined, PERT allows variance in values.
1965. The International Project Management Association (IPMA) was founded in Switzerland to bring together Project Management professionals from around the world.
1969. The Project Management Institute (PMI) was founded in the US as a is a global nonprofit professional organization for project management.
1984. A Theory of Constraints (TOC) was introduced by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt in his Novel “The Goal”. It is a methodology for identifying the most important limitation factor (bottleneck) that prevents the possibility to achieve a goal. According to the theory, you should systematically work on the improvement of the identified constraint until it is gone.
1986. SCRUM was introduces as a term for product development and called a form of organizational knowledge creation, that is especially good at innovation development continuously, incrementally and spirally.
1989. PRINCE Method was published by the UK Government agency CCTA and became the UK standard for all government information systems projects.
1996. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMbok Guide) was first published by the Project Management Institute.
The same year the PRINCE Method was upgraded to PRINCE II
1997. Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) was introduced by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt based on the methods and algorithms of Theory of Constraints (TOC).
1998. PMBOK becomes a Standard.
XXI CENTURY
2001. Agile Manifesto written.
2012. The International Organisation for Standardisation published “ISO 21500:2012, Guidance on Project Management“.
It is awesome to know what a progressive and intensive history our niche has. It is fascinating how many cool inventions were made and to realize your belonging to this professional sphere.
It’s time to celebrate this magnificent event!
How to party?
- If you know project managers, send them a greeting. They will appreciate your attention and awareness.
- Conduct some type of celebration within your team to have fun all together.
- Request project managers to share some thoughts, ideas or requests with the team or colleagues. I believe they should have a ton of feedbacks and suggestions and would be glad to tell you.
- Conduct a random act of kindness. Bring a cup of coffee or a cupcake.
- Just say ‘Thank you!’. Everyone wants to know that they and their work are recognized and appreciated. Project Managers are not an exception. Usually it is their job to engage and motivate others, today it’s time to give some rewards back.
And I would like to THANK all the Project Managers today! I wish all of us a huge and effective push-up in the career paths, personal and professional growth. Great job!
