Evolvement of Projects and Project Management

00:00 Although different from how we know and see it today.

00:03 Temporary initiatives with a specific goal and resource constraints have been happening for thousands of years.

00:09 So let's take a step back in time and see some old school projects.

00:15 Ancient Egypt.

00:17 Can you imagine pitching the Great Pyramid of Giza to a board of directors? As one of seven wonders of the world.

00:24 This construction was no doubt a massive endeavor with a unique result.

00:29 Great amounts of materials and workforce were employed and it's still unknown exactly how the work was organised and executed.

00:35 But the planning and management was something innovative, even for today's standards. 15th century.

00:45 This period was all about overseas expeditions to find new lands and resources. One particular project manager, Christopher Columbus, had tough times finding the budget for his initiative to find a path through the West to Asia.

00:59 His budget was three ships and a timeline of one year with a request of 10% of future revenues from any discoveries.

01:07 His business case was rejected multiple times by the king of Portugal, Genoa, Venice, and even the king of England.

01:16 Finally he found his sponsor, though the king and Queen of Spain.

01:21 Columbus departed in 1492 and made the first steps toward the discovery of the American continent by Europeans.

01:28 The rest is, well, history.

01:32 19th century.

01:34 Here comes the Industrial Revolution, the beginning of the fastest technological growth in recorded history.

01:41 Automation and mass production changed the face of trade and the way industries operate.

01:46 Economy and society had seen nothing like it.

01:50 Competition started growing and with it, the better use of time and resources employed for given work became much more critical.

02:00 20th century.

02:02 This is when project management, as we know it, really came into its own and started developing. We mentioned that after the Industrial Revolution, the time and resources were more and more limited and using them efficiently became absolutely fundamental. As a result, the project management field started to develop at a much faster pace.

02:23 Henry Gantt, one of the forefathers of project management, created a simple, yet ingenious table that illustrates activities that need to be performed on the vertical axis and a time indicator on the horizontal axis.

02:36 This was probably the first project schedule.

02:39 It was prominently used during World War One to plan and track the progress of Navy ship construction. We will look at this in more detail later in the course.

02:50 Then we have the revolutionary critical path method invented by DuPont and Remington Rand corporations in the late 1950s.

02:58 The CPM helped project managers calculate the fastest way to complete a project.

03:03 This is done by analyzing how the different activities are linked to each other.

03:08 Together with the expected durations, it helps project managers identify the best way to sequence the activities in their project.

03:14 This will also be discussed in greater detail in our course.

03:20 In the sixties, project management was established as a profession to associations were founded the International Project Management Association.

03:29 IPMA and a few years later the project management institution PMI.

03:35 Their goal was and still is to develop the project management discipline and to establish standards, best practices, tools and guidelines.

03:45 All of this led to the development of innovative project management standards and approaches. Don't worry, we will talk about them later in great, great detail.

03:56 And finally, welcome to the 21st century, where businesses have progressed technologically and expanded geographically like never before.

04:07 What is exceptional about today's projects is the amount of complexity around the desired result.

04:13 You can imagine the difference between opening a physical store versus an online one. Design connection, speed online payments, security client data regulations, customer service, and so on.

04:25 The activities, people and risks to consider are so much more in today's world.

04:31 And with more demanding projects comes a need for a strong project manager, one who can lead the way through complex projects which will inevitably determine the life or death of a business.

04:43 Awesome. Thanks for watching so far.

04:47 We'll now be taking you step by step through the life cycle of a project explaining what to do from beginning to end.

04:55 See you there.