Reflections on My Favorite Projects

 

by Dave Wakeman

Happy birthday, PMI! You gave us 50 years of projects, and all I’m giving you is this column with three of my favorite projects of all time? I kid. But reflecting on the impact of PMI and project management over the last 50 years got me thinking about how projects are at the core of so many improvements, big and small. 

The three I want to highlight this month reflect the ambition that project managers can have, the global impact of a great project, and where the next huge project innovations may be. Let’s take a look at my three favorite projects:

Putting a Man on the Moon

Can I really start anywhere else? For my money this is the best example of what great project managers, an excellent PMO and strong leadership can create. While it isn’t just one project, I think putting a man on the moon highlights several things that PMI pioneered over the years—two I want to highlight specifically. 

First, vision. When U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower first proposed the idea of Project Apollo, it was all about getting a three-man crew into space. By the time the project was complete, the United States had sent men to the moon seven times, successfully landing and completing their mission six of those times. 

Second, innovation. The scope of Project Apollo changed over time, growing from the initial plan of putting a few men in space to putting man on the moon. That meant we needed new technologies and new ideas to get us there. One of the hallmarks of a successful project manager is the ability to create something out of nothing, knowing what the goal of the project is and having the framework to work within to achieve success. 

Project Apollo showed us that with the right goals, vision and sponsorship, we can accomplish almost anything. 

The Debut of the iPhone

I’m torn on this, probably like a lot of folks, because we’ve seen that as much as technology has helped us connect, learn and communicate, we have also seen the negatives. I’m going to keep the iPhone on my list of favorite projects for one simple reason that should be important to project managers: It had a clear and great project scope. 

What was termed Project Purple 2 was Steve Jobs’ attempt to create a computer with a touchscreen that you could use to directly interact with your device. When he came up with the idea of building it into a phone, the technology was new and the capacity of achieving a phone that would work without a keyboard was untested. 

But the ambition and scope of creating a computer that doubled as a phone that you could type on with your fingers won out, and our lives have never been the same. 

Tesla and Electric Cars in General

I’ll claim bias here because I know there were electric cars before Tesla came along, but Tesla was the first electric car that made it cool to drive electric. 

We can look at the original Tesla roadster as the project that launched it all. The concept was for Tesla founder, Martin Eberhard, to create a high-mileage sports car, solving a need for himself. When Elon Musk got involved in 2004, he helped move the company towards using the proceeds of the car to help fund the development of mass-market cars. 

All of this is fine, but the real importance of the project shows up in the way that the company wasn’t happy with the way that the motor and transmission worked in the chassis, forcing Tesla to build its own engines and power sources. 

What followed was the most advanced rechargeable battery for cars that the world has ever seen—revolutionizing what is possible from an electric car. 

This final project highlights how things build off each other and how projects are the basis of all good things that come to us. Because if we hadn’t developed the technology to put a man on the moon, we may have never been able to uncover the components and the technologies needed to put a computer in our pocket. And if we didn’t have a computer in our pocket, how would I ever be able to use my phone as my car key! 

While that last point is a reach, my final point is that the greatest gift PMI has given all of us as professionals over the last 50 years is a chance to learn, grow and repeat the process in a way that we can build off of all the people that came before us. For that we should all be grateful! 

Happy 50th, PMI: Here’s to the next 50! Please share your thoughts on these impressive projects below.