Project Example 2 - Manned Powered Flight

John Stringfellow  1848
This could be considered a project failure.  Although initial results were very promising the project was not continued beyond a prototype.  John Stringfellow was an engineer with amazing skill at making steam engines.  He had a lifelong obsession with flight. He discovered that it took a rook  one foot of wing span to lift half a pound of weight at twenty miles per hour to hold it in the air. With this knowledge it was not long before he had constructed a light weight steam engine to rotate a propeller which could  be slung underneath an aeroframe. The wingspan was 10 feet, spars were of  wood, and fabric of silk. The steam engine and boiler, with paper-thin copper  walls, were in a gondola below the fuselage, a total weight of 9lbs. Two huge propellers rotated in opposite directions to give lateral stability and with no vertical fin, and it would veer at the slightest disturbance.      

Wright Brothers 1903
This could be considered a project success because the prototype flew a sustained and controlled powered flight for 12 seconds. They systematically  broke the problem down into its 3 major components of takeoff, propulsion and control, and resolved each of these. They constructed everything from wings to propeller.

The Wright brothers were bicycle manufacturers used to working with unstable machines and this gave them an advantage over all the other inventors in the race. They carefully managed all the critical paths of project and completed testing. Fearing their rival inventors no public flights between 1903 and 1908 were made as they awaited the patent.      

In 1905 they contacted the US War Department and governments in England, France, Germany, and Russia, offering to sell a flying machine. They were turned down each time as they were thought crackpots.

The Wright brothers were great project managers carefully managing the project to ensure ultimate success, and biding their time.