Lessons from the Titanic. How the lessons learned from the sinking of Essay

Lessons from the Titanic. How the lessons learned from the sinking of the liner Titanic can be applied to modern projects - Essay Example The sinking of Titanic in Atlantic on 14 April 1912 resulting in death of 1502 passengers is remembered as one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in modern history. The purpose of this dissertation is to review the historical project of constructing Titanic for operational use. The project also aims at analyzing the reasons from the perspective of project management that led to failure of this huge project of its time and applying the lessons learnt to modern day projects. The research on the subject is mainly based on extensive review of available literature, for which a variety of the references including but not limited to the internet resources only were consulted. In this dissertation two pronged approach was used for research methodology: technical investigation and project management. Titanic Project was studied and analyzed from the perspectives of both technical blunders and project management failures from its conception to operations. The technical investigation methodology aimed to find out the technical and operational reasons for the sinking of the Titanic. Project Management methodology used information from technical investigation to analyze the reasons of failures from the project management perspective and develop an analogy to modern Project Management practices and standards in an attempt to identify the actions that could have prevented the disastrous occurrence. From a technical view point, over confidence in the invincibility of the Titanic led to number of critical compromises like selection of inappropriate material for ship hull, height of bulk heads and changed engine configuration during the design and construction phase of the ship since the team believed that altering the original pans would not affect the safety features of the ship. Besides, compromises were also made during the testing phase of the Titanic where only partial testing was carried out trusting the track record of Olympic liner as excellent, which was not the actual case. From the project management point of view, the major element that was missing from the Project plan of Titanic was risk management. Much efforts were laid to precisely define the functional and nonfunctional requirements; however, more emphasis was laid on functional requirements on the cost of compromising the non-functional requirements. These compromises resulted in risks to the project which were neither identified nor planned for mitigation. Ignoring these risks during the design phase led to the sinking of the Titanic ship. Risk mitigating actions could include introducing double hull, compartmentalization and raising the height of bulkhead, and incorporating and balanced keel for such a large size ship to protect against the wave capsizing. Studying the successful projects can help project managers to apply the common experiences to the new ones, and learning from the failed projects can help to avoid the similar mistakes from recurring. In this report, less ons learned from failure of Titanic were analyzed in analogy with the modern project management practices and were studied for application to present day projects. Table of Contents Chapter Title Page 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Overview of the Project Titanic 1 1.2 Aims and Objectives 3 1.3 Scope and Limitations 6 1.4 Dissertation Layout and Approach 6 1.5 Summary 7 2 Methodology 8 2.1 Research Methodology 8 2.2 Key Research 9 2.3 Referencing Sources 12 2.4 Methodology for Analysis 13 3 Review and Analysis 15 3.1 Historical Facts