Heroic Projects: The Domesday Book

Steve Kirk is Director, SGK Consulting.

  ProjectsAtWork  

In its broad scope and aggressive timescale, an unfinished medieval “balance sheet” remains an astonishing feat of public administration, the oldest U.K. public record in existence. With limited resources, teams undertook a massive canvassing effort and developed one of the first questionnaires to capture data.

When we look to other projects for guidance, we often focus on the negative. Sometimes, it seems that you can’t pick up an article that doesn’t refer to the Standish report or other research that tells us how badly we do projects and what failures they have been. I think it’s time to redress the balance. It’s time to recognize that there have been spectacularly successful projects in the past that have changed the world and achieved what seemed impossible. This is the second article in a series that describes these “heroic projects” and highlights lessons that are still applicable to our projects today.

Imagine attempting to audit all the land, buildings, people and livestock in a country of 100,000 square kilometres with just a few skilled, literate staff, poor communications and a reluctant populace who can’t be relied on to co-operate. Even today, you might hesitate at the challenge, but nearly 1,000 years ago?

Yet, this was the project that William I of England, better known as William the Conqueror, commissioned …

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