Summary
Building upon the popularity of the first book in the Lessons from History series, this is the second book on Titanic in the series. It is an abbreviated version of the original, and has less technical material. It is better suited for project team members and stakeholders like executives and C level officers. This book does not contain a lot of technical jargon so much of the content can be understood by anyone with a business background.  The content of this book could benefit all organizations that see technology as a critical component to the success of their organization.

  Take a look inside (includes first and second chapter)
 

Why Did R.M.S. Titanic Founder?

According to popular myth a combination of factors led to Titanic's disaster namely bad luck, a hidden ice-spur, material failure, brittle steel, bad luck and incompetence at sea. According to more recent research, based on a closer re-examination and re-interpretation of the two Titanic inquiries, the truth lies closer to factors that plague projects today that lead to project failure. Namely, poor project management which allowed major compromises to be made in every project stage - from design to construction to testing, and right into implementation and operation. Some compromises were more significant like those in the design and the shortened height of the bulkheads, or the reduced number of lifeboats. In today's terms these are known as compromises in non-functional requirements.

Olympic's collision with H.M.S. Hawke (see photo below) also played a significant part as it impacted Titanic's project schedule as major repairs had to be carried out. The scope of Titanic's sea trials (testing) was dramatically reduced so the launch window could still be realized, after all the world's richest people had booked for the social event of 1912. If you were one of the financial elite you had to be on board, White Star had completed a brilliant marketing job. 

Titanic's Construction Project Impact on the Disaster 

Through Titanic's construction project the elevation of expectations that this was "the greatest ship ever built" instilled a sense of supreme confidence. This led to further compromises in the implementation stage and allowed for catastrophic mistakes to be made like pushing the ship to its operational limits in a bid to beat Olympic's best crossing time. A calamitous failure in key feedback mechanism (ice bucket test, wireless operators overloaded with commercial traffic, confusion by the lookouts) resulted in grounding the ship onto an ice shelf. 

The ship may have sat there on the ice shelf for up to 15 minutes as two assessment groups assessed the damage on board.

Failing to adequately analyze the situation and succumbing to business pressures to save face the crippled ship was restarted and limped off the ice shelf in the belief it could be returned to Halifax.

Project Over Confidence

R.M.S. Titanic was considered by many, including its designers and builders to be an unsinkable ship. With redundant safety systems that used the latest emerging technologies of the day, the ship was considered so safe that it did not even need a full complement of 48 lifeboats. Yet, a collision with ice put an end to the ship on her maiden voyage and led to the deaths of thousands of passengers and crew. The sinking of Titanic is one of the worst maritime disasters ever and was caused by mistakes in the project.

Photos: Courtesy of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum

Book Reviews

The following reviews were posted on Gantthead.com:

1. The [book] was wonderful and fit together like a puzzle. Using the Titanic as an analogy is a great hook as well as teaching tool. (January 22, 2004)
2. This is totally on the mark! (January 30, 2004 )
3. I just read over all [of this book] and found it excellent. Many of us have ofter referred to the Titanic in working on projects, we now see how close we were. The lessons learned from this tragety can be applied to projects today. (September 18, 2004)
4. My congratulations go to the the author on a riveting [ebook]. I was glued to the screen, reading each part to discover ‘what happened at the end’. If [he is] in PM, maybe [he is] in the wrong trade. An excellent read. (May 24, 2005)

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 disastrous compromises and mistakes were fully avoidable.