Bibliography for the Lessons From History Series

Project Lessons from the Great Escape (Stalag Luft III) While you might think your project plan is perfect, would you bet your life on it? In the Second World War, a group of 220 captured airmen did just that -- they staked the lives of everyone in the camp on the success of a project to secretly build a series of tunnels out of a prison camp their captors thought was escape proof. The prisoners formally structured their work as a project, using the project organization techniques of the day. This book is about how the escape committee, under tremendous pressure, inspired their inmates around them to continue a fight considered lost. Not only did they have to stave off hunger, psychological pressures but deliver a project under acute circumstances. This meant understanding the problems facing them, focusing slender resources on the immediate task in hand, unifying the camp prisoners, and directing these into the project. With very little time the escape committee transformed the camp into an agile project one that could adapt to changing and unexpected daily situations. COMING July 1, 2007 Read more on this book Avoiding Project Disaster: Titanic Lessons for IT Executives Imagine you are in one of Titanic's lifeboats, drifting away from the sinking ship. As you look back, you wonder how such a disaster could have happened. Titanic's maiden voyage was a disaster waiting to happen as a result of the compromises made during its construction project. This book explores how IT Executives & IT Project Managers can take lessons from this nuts-and-bolts construction project and apply them to their IT projects today. This book shows how the lessons learned from the disaster can be applied to IT projects today. In modern IT projects, we often have situations where we believe that we have designed, built, or launched a "perfect" solution. This book juxtaposes the Titanic story and modern IT projects so that we can learn from the disaster and avoid making similar mistakes. COMING July 1, 2006, based on the original book On-line, On-time, On-budget Read more on this book and supplemental material. Titanic Lessons for IT Projects Building upon the popularity of the first book in the Lessons from History series, this book presents lessons for IT project managers harvested from the project that designed, built, and launched the R.M.S. Titanic. Full of practical advice, this book builds on the most notorious "failed project" in recent memory, the sinking of an "unsinkable" ship. The sinking of Titanic is one of the worst maritime disasters ever. Titanic Lessons for IT Projects analyzes the project that designed, built, and launched the ship, showing how compromises made during early project stages led to serious flaws in this supposedly "perfect ship." In addition, the book explains how major mistakes during the early days of the ship's operations led to the disaster. All of these disasterous compromises and mistakes were fully avoidable. Read more on this book and supplemental material. Churchill's Adaptive Enterprise: Lessons for Business Today Winston Churchill is widely regarded as one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century. But as he became Prime Minister in May 1940, in a period of calamitous change during World War II, what did he actually do? How did he transform his organization to turn his perilous situation around? Both Churchill in 1940 and business people today grapple with an unprecedented level of change adversely impacting their organizations at the enterprise, business unit, or project level. This book analyzes a period of time from WW II when Winston Churchill faced near defeat for the British in the face of sustained German attacks. The book describes the strategies he took to overcome incredible odds and turn the tide on the impending invasion. The historical analysis is done through a modern business and information technology lens, describing Churchill's actions and strategy using modern business tools and techniques. Aimed at business executives, IT managers, and project managers, the book extracts learnings from Churchill's experiences that can be applied to business problems today. Read more on this book and its supplemental material.

This page last updated on July 1, 2007.

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