Leading Engineers

Sometimes one should not ask the Internet but a senior engineer to find the answers one is seeking for:

The art of planning for the future has always been a human trait. In essence a project can be captured on paper with a few simple elements: a start date, an end date, the tasks that have to be carried out and when they should be finished, and some idea of the resources (people, machines etc) that will be needed during the course of the project.

When the plan starts to involve different things happening at different times, some of which are dependent on each other, plus resources required at different times and in different quantities and perhaps working at different rates, the paper plan could start to cover a vast area and be unreadable.

In the late 1950's, Admiral Raborn of the U.S. Navy needed the Polaris missile program up and flying as quickly as possible due to the perceived threat of a "missile gap" between the U.S. and Russia. Traditional project management wasn't enough to ensure the safety of the nation. The problem was solved with the help of Willard Fazar's PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique). PERT became the mandatory requirement of all US Navy projects.

That is the background of the book Project Management by Victor G. Hajek. Thank you, Martin.