Welcome to Lessons from History

Written for organizations applying today's emerging technologies to common business problems. The series uses relevant historical case studies to examine how great historical projects and emerging technologies of the past solved complex problems. It then draws comparisons to the challenges encountered in today’s projects, and project failures. It even looks at visions of the future taken from the past.

Who We Are
Lessons from History is a publishing imprint for a series of publications for today’s business world. It was established in 2001 and our publisher is MMPUBS. 

Our catalog of books continues to grow with new titles and new authors.

We also deliver speaking engagements and workshops and since 2002 have taken part in over 211 events and presented to over 13,051 attendees. 

We are active in the education field and the series has been endorsed by several universities (Virginia, Denver, Waterloo). We also regularly feature at many conferences and symposiums in the business world.

One unique factor of the series is the authors are from the business world but, with a passion for history. This combination allows for a deeper understanding of challenges faced by today's business.

Can Business Learn from History?
For thousands of years people have been planning and running projects that have leveraged emerging technologies of the time, to create unique and wonderful outcomes, structures like the pyramids, buildings, or bridges, or engineering projects to build various machines. 

Similarly, people have gone on great expeditions and journeys, and raced their rivals in striving to be first. For example, circumnavigating the world or  conquering the poles. Through pioneers like Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama, Cabral, and Magellan their great voyages of discovery and exploration across the world opened up new trading routes and shortened the traditional overland journey.These were all forms of projects that required initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing.

Important Lessons within Historical Projects
Historical projects can contain important lessons that are very relevant to projects today. For example, the sinking of Titanic may be attributed to mistakes in operation but the construction project had a significant impact.

The disaster was caused by compromises made during the project design, construction, and testing phases to accommodate various business interests; these compromises reduced the effectiveness of safety systems (functional versus non-functional requirements) and provided faulty operational data upon which to base management decisions. While no one could predict that the ship was going to strike ice, the compromises made during the build and launch of the ship almost guaranteed that such a collision was going to be a serious one and result in a catastrophic project failure.

Using a historical example illustrates the consequences of seemingly innocuous operational decisions, helping executives avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

"A quarter of the benefits of IT projects are being lost by organizations across the globe because of management failures during a project’s lifecycle..."
Source: KPMG International survey, Nov 2005  

In the latest CHAOS Summary 2009 report from The Standish Group, that surveyed 400 organizations, found that IT project success rates were dropping. In the past two years, it found that 24% were considered a failure (cancelled before completion or never used). Up to 44% were considered challenged and 32 % were considered successful, completed on time, and on budget.