Project Management History
Project management has been practiced since early civilization. Until 1900 civil engineering projects were generally managed by creative architects, engineers, and master builders themselves, among those for example Vitruvius (1st century BC), Christopher Wren (1632–1723), Thomas Telford (1757–1834) and Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859).[6] It was in the 1950s that organizations started to systematically apply project management tools and techniques to complex engineering projects.[7]
Henry Gantt (1861–1919), the father of planning and control techniques.
As a discipline, Project Management developed from several fields of application including civil construction, engineering, and heavy defense activity.[8] Two forefathers of project management are Henry Gantt, called the father of planning and control techniques,[9] who is famous for his use of the Gantt chart as a project management tool; and Henri Fayol for his creation of the 5 management functions which form the foundation of the body of knowledge associated with project and program management.[10] Both Gantt and Fayol were students of Frederick Winslow Taylor’s theories of scientific management. His work is the forerunner to modern project management tools including work breakdown structure (WBS) and resource allocation.
The 1950s marked the beginning of the modern Project Management era where core engineering fields come together working as one. Project management became recognized as a distinct discipline arising from the management discipline with engineering model.[11] In the United States, prior to the 1950s, projects were managed on an ad hoc basis using mostly Gantt Charts, and informal techniques and tools. At that time, two mathematical project-scheduling models were developed. The “Critical Path Method” (CPM) was developed as a joint venture between DuPont Corporation and Remington Rand Corporation for managing plant maintenance projects. And the “Program Evaluation and Review Technique” or PERT, was developed by Booz Allen Hamilton as part of the United States Navy’s (in conjunction with the Lockheed Corporation) Polaris missile submarine program;[12] These mathematical techniques quickly spread into many private enterprises.