From the Author:
An author's perspective on the journey to complete the book
Project Lessons from The Great Escape (Stalag Luft III) is the fourth book in the Lessons from History series. It follows the evolution of a Prisoner of War escape from a World War II camp and applies lessons to today's business and project environment. The book makes business recommendations that are backed up by its exhaustively detailed case study of a project team working to achieve a common goal.
When I completed Churchill's Adaptive Enterprise I had been looking for a while for a follow up in the series but a somewhat simpler historical project. I set some criteria which included a straightforward story line, a well defined beginning, middle, and end. I was also looking for a difficult situation, a dire environment to launch a project, where the political support was lacking, and there would be a lot of groups trying to close it down. It had to be an event that was run as a project and relied more on human ingenuity and perseverance, than established practices and tools.
The idea of using the Great Escape was a true moment of realization, and I was very excited in getting it started. When I first considered the idea I was concerned it could be somewhat removed from what is generally considered "a project" in the business world. It was the least obvious project I could think of, and most people would not consider it to be a project. After sometime to further research it and run the idea by a few people including my publisher Kevin Aguanno at MMPUBS I became convinced and was convinced it was a good idea.
My analysis showed that this event went through a very meticulous and an enormous level planning. The escape committee that planned the escape instigated a project of a monumental scale. They were scaling up previous projects by 20 fold. Nothing was easy, almost everything was a challenge to the project team. An inhospitable and inconducive environment was in place to numb prisoners into boredom and inactivity. These were truly dire circumstances to launch a project from. Hence, the appeal as today's projects seem tame and easy in comparison.
The publisher set up a challenge and suggested that one of the criteria of in writing the book was to look at the project from the 9 project management knowledge areas of the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK), developed in 1983. The question was whether they would hold up in project that preceeded them by 40 years. It would help establish how well founded these were. Was there evidence that projects of the past followed these intuitively, in the days before the project management discipline was established. Gut feel told me it did, and I wanted to determine if and how well the project followed these knowledge areas. I will let you make the determination.
* for more read lessons-from-history.com/node/103
From the Back Cover:
The Great Escape book and materials are currently being used for one of the class modules in an online project management course at University of Denver University College for a graduate level class called MOTM4470, Project Management Dynamics. As part of the syllabus the book provides examples and a relationship to the PMBOK knowledge areas.
Review by Ray Kaufman (CO, United States) Adjunct Professor at Denver Univ, University College.
Are you looking for book to help show other how to identify and use project management principles? Seeking examples of project management principles or categorizations? You have found it. I teach at the Graduate School level and we used the book, its story, ideas and examples to understand project management. My students read the book, praised its content and examples. We liked how the author made it project management practical. He showed us how to recognize issues and use it today.
* For more information read lessons-from-history.com/node/78
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.