Project Management: Part of Your Military DNA

Jay Hicks is an author, instructor and consultant with over 30 years of business and government planning and leadership. He advises commercial and federal organizations on the planning, development and leadership of project management organizations, delivering viability and value. With a special kinship for military personnel, Jay provides guidance on successful civilian career transition. He is the co-founder of Gr8Transtions4U.com, where advocating the value of hiring military personnel is the key focus.

  Career Development  

For years you have performed duties as an Action Officer, Training NCO, Operations Officer, Planner, Commander and Platoon Sergeant. Do you know how closely these jobs relate to commercial project management? Do you know the roots of modern day project management are tightly interwoven with the military? Are you aware that by virtue of having served in the military, project management is part of your makeup, your history, your DNA? 

The construction of the Panama Canal was one of the first major, modern military project management efforts. After several years of frustration, President Roosevelt selected the Army Corps of Engineers to finish the canal work and appointed Major George Washington Goethals as Chief Engineer in February 1907. Major Goethals used techniques on this project, which eventually became part of modern project management. Goethals would establish the first Work Breakdown Structures in history by dividing up the division of labor and duties.

In 1917, General William Crozier--United States Army, Chief of Ordnance--hired American mechanical engineer Henry Gantt, who developed the now famous Gantt Chart, in an effort to prepare the United States for mobilization and deployment into the First World War. 

The D-Day Invasion in 1944 was a massive project with a multitude of plans, sequels and branches within a plan. General …

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