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Project Management
A Strategic Managerial Approach Tenth
Project Management A Strategic Managerial Approach
Tenth Edition
JACK R. MEREDITH
Broyhill Distinguished Scholar and Chair in Operations, Emeritus Wake Forest University
SCOTT M. SHAFER
Associate Dean and Professor of Management Wake Forest University
SAMUEL J. MANTEL, JR. (DECEASED)
Previously the Joseph S. Stern Professor Emeritus of Operations Management University of Cincinnati
DEDICATION
To the memory of Sam Mantel, Jr.: Scholar, author, mentor, friend. J. R. M. and S.M.S
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Title: Project management : a strategic managerial approach / JACK R. MEREDITH, Broyhill Distinguished Scholar and Chair in Operations, Emeritus, Wake Forest University, SCOTT M. SHAFER, Associate Dean and Professor of Management Wake Forest University, SAMUEL J. MANTEL, JR. (DECEASED), Previously the Joseph S. Stern Professor Emeritus of Operations Management, University of Cincinnati.
Description: Tenth Edition. | Hoboken : Wiley, [2017] | Revised edition of Project management, 2015. | Includes index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2017036857 (print) | LCCN 2017040295 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119369080 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119369110 (epub) | ISBN 9781119369097 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781118947029
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The inside back cover will contain printing identification and country of origin if omitted from this page. In addition, if the ISBN on the back cover differs from the ISBN on this page, the one on the back cover is correct.
Approach
We have come a long way in project management since our cavemen ancestors formed a project, as our former colleague Sam Mantel used to say, “to gather the raw material for mammoth stew.” However, its use has virtually exploded since the mid-1990s. Businesses now regularly use project management to accomplish unique outcomes with limited resources under critical time constraints. In the service sector of the economy, the use of project management to achieve an organization’s goals is even more common. Advertising campaigns, voter registration drives, weddings, and even management seminars on the subject of project management are organized as projects.
But a relatively new growth area is the use of projects as a way of accomplishing strategic organizational changes such as new ways of providing services, typically in conjunction with new software programs and other advanced technologies. Transformational change on this level is a major step beyond the delivery of a project’s outputs like a road, a building, a new product, or a computer program. The difference is that much more attention is directed toward both the initiation of the project, including the business case and its non-monetary justifications, and the utilization of the project, involving possibly customers or other stakeholders. Moreover, the scope of strategic transformational projects frequently involves dynamic perturbations, meaning that the project manager and other stakeholders have to alter course throughout the duration of the project.
When we wrote the first edition of this textbook in 1983, there weren’t any textbooks for those interested in learning project management, only professional (typically engineering) books, so we adopted a managerial perspective for the book following the “life cycle” of the project. That is, it addresses project management from the perspective of what the project manager and other stakeholders will encounter, both chronologically during the initiation, implementation, and utilization of the project’s output, as well as practically, in the sense of what senior managers and the project manager need to know and do.
This managerial life-cycle perspective, we believe, addresses the basic nature of managing all types of projects—public, business, engineering, information systems, and so on—as well as the specific techniques and
insights required to carry out this unique way of getting things done. It also discusses the demands made on the project manager and the nature of the manager’s interaction with the rest of the parent organization. And the book covers the difficult problems associated with conducting a project using people and organizations that represent different cultures and may be separated by considerable distances. Finally, it even covers the issues arising when the decision is made to close or terminate a project.
The book is primarily intended for use as a college textbook for teaching project management at the advanced undergraduate or master’s level. The book is also intended for both senior managers as well as current and prospective project managers who wish to share our insights and ideas about the field. We have drawn freely on our personal experiences working with senior and project managers and on the experience of friends and colleagues who have spent much of their working lives serving in what they like to call the “real world.” As well as being a text that is equally appropriate for classes on the management of service, product, or engineering projects, we have found that information systems/technology (IS/IT) students in our classes find the material particularly helpful for managing their projects.
Organization and Content
Given our managerial perspective, in this tenth edition we have kept the previous organization which demarks more clearly the activities that occur before the launch of the project, setting up those activities that have to do with the context (or initiation) of the project in the first part of the book, and those that have to do with the planning for the project in the second part. Actually executing the project and then utilizing the outputs constitutes the third part of the book. Each part consists of four chapters, which seems to be a comfortable and easy framework for the reader.
Following an introductory chapter that comments on the role and importance of projects in our society and discusses project management as a potential career for aspiring managers, the book covers the context, events, and issues arising during the management of projects in the order in which they usually occur in the life of a project. Part I, Project Initiation concerns the context of
the project, which is crucial for the project manager to understand if he or she is to be successful in executing the project. It begins with a description of how projects are selected for implementation based on their tie to the organization’s strategy and goals. Part I also covers the many roles and responsibilities of the project manager, the skills the project manager needs for handling conflict, and the various ways the project may be set up within the organization’s reporting structure (including how different ways of organizing projects tend to create different problems for project managers and their teams).
Part II, Project Planning then moves into the planning processes starting with the major tools used in project activity planning. This is followed by project budgeting and risk planning, project scheduling, and finally, resource allocation among the activities. Part III, Project Execution finally gets into the action, beginning with monitoring the activities, largely through information systems, and then controlling them to assure that the results meet senior management’s expectations. Evaluating and possibly auditing the project at its major milestones or phase-gates is another, though separate, control action that senior management often employs, and last, the project must be closed and its outputs utilized to achieve the benefits desired from the project.
We have relegated the discussion of two important aspects of projects that usually occur very early in the project life cycle—creativity/idea generation and technological forecasting—to the book’s Web site. Although few project managers engage in either of these tasks (typically being appointed to project leadership after these activities have taken place), we believe that a knowledge of these subjects can make the project manager more effective.
In writing this text we assume that all readers have taken an elementary course in management or have had equivalent experience, and are familiar with some basic principles of probability and statistics. (Appendix A on the Web site (http://www.wiley.com/college/meredith) can serve as an initial tutorial on the subject or as a refresher for rusty knowledge.)
Any approach chosen to organize knowledge carries with it an implication of neatness and order that rarely occurs in reality. We are quite aware that projects almost never proceed in an orderly, linear way through the stages and events we describe here. The need to deal with change and uncertainty is a constant task for the project manager. We have tried to reflect this in repeated references to the organizational, interpersonal, economic, and technical glitches that create crises in the life cycle of every project, and thus in the life of every project manager.
Finally, although we use a life-cycle approach to organization, the chapters include material concerning the major areas of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) as defined by the Project Management Institute. (See Bibliography for Chapter 1.) Anyone wishing to prepare for PMI certification (see Chapter 1) in some of these areas may have to go beyond the information covered in this text.
Pedagogy
Because this book is primarily a textbook, we have included numerous pedagogical aids to foster this purpose. As in earlier editions, short summaries appear at the end of the text of each chapter, followed by glossaries defining key terms and concepts introduced in the chapter. End-of-chapter materials also include review questions and exercises revisiting the materials covered in the chapter. There are also sets of conceptual discussion questions intended to broaden the students’ perspectives and to force them to think beyond the chapter materials to its implications. The answers (though not the detailed solutions) to the even-numbered problems are on the book’s website. To keep our attitude in perspective, we occasionally offer Dilbert® cartoons appropriate to the topic under discussion. Finally, there are questions covering the many Project Management in Practice application examples found throughout the chapters.
As in the past, we include incidents for discussion, which are brief “caselettes” oriented primarily toward the specific subjects covered in the chapter, but sometimes materials and concepts covered in earlier chapters. We also offer a continuing integrative class project for those users who prefer a running case throughout the chapters that builds on the chapter materials as students progress through the book. And at the very end of each chapter, we typically offer a reading and/or a case, with potential discussion questions at the end of each.
What’s New
In this edition, we have made many updates, additions, and changes.
• One of the major changes in this edition has been the introduction of Organizational Project Management
in Chapter 2, including the strategic issue of governance, especially for mega-projects, as they are now called. We describe the internal stakeholders involved in each of the four phases of a project and their roles and responsibilities and conclude this discussion with a public sector example.
• Due to the increased length of Chapter 2, we cut out some of the quantitative project selection material, rewrote an example to focus on project selection, and moved the last section on Project Bids and RFPs into the section Better Cost Estimating and Bidding in Chapter 7.
• Two significant changes are the addition of a major section on Agile project management in Chapter 6 and a new Reading on the Evolution of Agile.
• Due to the increased length of Chapter 6, we moved the issues of risk planning to Chapter 7 to join the existing section there on risk simulation. Chapter 7 also has a new reading on resilience, risk, and agility.
• Chapter 7 also has a new Case on Fuddruckers project budgeting.
• We enhanced the existing case in Chapter 8, now titled Nutristar Energy, Inc.
• A new follow-on case was written for Chapter 11 based on the Chapter 10 case: The Project Manager/ Customer Interface (B).
• A new section on Benefit Realization was added in Chapter 13 to close the project in accordance with the concepts of organizational project management.
• With all the aforementioned changes, we added some new questions and moved summary items, questions, glossary items, exercises, and bibliography entries, to their new chapters.
• To supplement the new material, we added new references to the bibliography and deleted most of the older references before 1990, except for a few classics.
• In the Excel spreadsheet examples, we replaced the algebraic calculations with Excel functions.
• Finally, we updated the Dilbert cartoons.
As before, a student version of Crystal Ball®, an Excel® add-in, again comes with the book. This software makes simulation reasonably straightforward and
not particularly complicated. The use of simulation as a technique for risk analysis is demonstrated in several ways in different chapters. (Because relatively few students are familiar with simulation software, step-by-step instructions are included in the text.)
Microsoft Project® has become the dominant application software in the field, outselling its closest competitor about 4 to 1. Our coverage of software tends, therefore, to be centered on Microsoft Project® (and on Crystal Ball®), but includes a brief discussion of the many “add-ons” that are now available to supplement Microsoft Project® and its competitors. Because the various versions of Microsoft Project® are quite similar in the way that they perform most of the basic tasks of project management, we generally do not differentiate between the versions, referring to any and all simply as Microsoft Project (MSP). We have also added some exercises to the end-of-chapter material that can utilize computer software. Similar materials are also available on the Web site.
There is, of course, the danger that human nature, operating in its normal discrete mode, will shift the task of learning project management to that of learning project management software. Projects have often failed because the project manager started managing the software instead of the project. Instructors need to be aware of the problem and must caution students not to fall into this trap.
Online Supplements
The Instructor’s Resource Guide on the Web site www.wiley.com/college/meredith provides additional assistance to the project management instructor. In addition to the answers/solutions to the problems, questions, readings, and cases, this edition includes teaching tips, a computerized test bank, additional cases, and PowerPoint slides. All of these valuable resources are available online (http://www.wiley.com/college/meredith). In addition, the student Web site contains Web quizzes, PowerPoint® slides, Appendix A: Probability and Statistics, Appendix B: Answers to Even-Numbered Problems, Appendix C: Technological Forecasting, Appendix D: Creativity and Idea Generation, Chapter 3 Appendix: Primer on Effective Time Management, and a Microsoft Project Manual.
Acknowledgments
We owe a debt of gratitude to all those who have helped us with this book. First, we thank the managers and students who helped us solidify our ideas about proper methods for managing projects and proper ways of teaching the subject. Second, we thank the project teams and leaders in all of our project management classes. Third, we thank the adopters and reviewers of the many editions of this book, many who contacted us personally to convey improvements and corrections. Finally, we thank the staff at Wiley for their help in the production of this book, and Suzanne Ingrao of Ingrao Associates for her work as our personal production editor par excellence.
Special thanks are due to those who have significantly influenced our thinking about project management or supplied materials to help us write this book: Jeffrey Camm, James Evans, Martin Levy, John McKinney, and William Meyers, all of the Univ. of Cincinnati; S. J. Mantel III, PMP; Jeffrey Pinto, Pennsylvania State Univ. at Erie; Stephen Wearne, Univ. of Manchester; and the Staff of the Project Management Institute.
We owe a massive debt of gratitude to the reviewers for this and previous editions: Steve Allen, Truman State Univ.; Kwasi Amoako-Gyampah, Univ. of North Carolina at Greensboro; Nicholas Aquilano, Univ. of Arizona; Bob Ash, Indiana Univ., Southeast; Bud Baker, Wright State Univ.; Robert J. Berger, Univ. of Maryland; Robert Bergman, Univ. of Houston; William Brauer, Bemidji State Univ.; Tyson Browning, Texas Christian University; Maj. Mark D. Camdle, Air Force Inst. of Tech.; Howard Chamberlin, Texas A&M Univ.; Chin-Sheng Chen, Florida International Univ.; Murugappan Chettiar, Farleigh Dickinson University; Susan Cholette, San Francisco Univ.; Denis Cioffi, George Washington Univ.; Desmond Cook, Ohio State Univ.; the late Larry Crowley, Auburn Univ.; Catherine Crummett, James Madison Univ.; Edward Davis, Univ. of Virginia; Burton Dean, San Jose State Univ.; Michael H. Ensby, Clarkson Univ.; Abel -Fernandez, Univ. of the Pacific; Bruce Fischer, Elmhurst College; Bertie M. Geer, Northern Kentucky Univ.; Erin Gerber, University of Louisville; Richard E. Gunther, California State Univ., Northridge; William Hayden, Jr., SUNY, Buffalo; Jane E. Humble, Arizona State Univ.; Richard H. Irving, York Univ.; Roderick V. James, DeVry Univ.; Homayoun Kahmooshi, George Washington Univ.; David L. Keeney, Stevens Inst. of Tech.; Ted Klastorin, Univ. of Washington; Erich Kreidler, University of
Southern California; David Kukulka, Buffalo State Univ.; Young Hoon Kway, George Washington Univ.; Chung-Shing Le, Pacific Lutheran University; William Leban, DeVry Univ.; Ardeshir Lohrasbi, Univ. of Illinois, Springfield; Bil Matthews, William Patterson University; Sara McComb, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst; Abe Meilich, Walden Univ.; Mary Meixell, Quinnipiac Univ.; Jaindeep Motwani, Grand Valley State Univ.; William Moylan, Eastern Michigan University; Barin Nag, Towson Univ.; John E. Nicolay, Jr., Univ. of Minnesota; David L. Overbye, Gregory Parnell, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; DeVry Univ.; Pat Penfield, Syracuse Univ.; Ed Pohl, Univ. of Arkansas; Michael Poli, Stevens Inst. of Tech.; Amit Raturi, Univ. of Cincinnati; David J. Robb, Univ. of Calgary; Arthur C. Rogers, City Univ., Washington; David Russo, Univ. of Texas, Dallas; Boong-Yeol Ryoo, Florida International Univ.; Thomas Schuppe, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Ruth Seiple, Univ. of Cincinnati; John Shanfi, DeVry Inst. of Tech., Irving, TX; Wade Shaw, Florida Inst. of Tech.; Richard V. Sheng, DeVry Inst. of Tech., San Marino, CA; Bill Sherrard, San Diego State Univ.; Joyce T. Shirazi, Univ. of Maryland, Univ. College; Chris Simber, Stevens Inst. of Tech.; Gene Simons, Rensselaer Polytech. Inst.; Kimberlee Snyder, Winona State Univ.; Herbert Spirer, Univ. of Connecticut; Eric Sprouls, Univ. of Southern Indiana; Peter Strunk, Univ. of Cincinnati; Samuel Taylor, Univ. of Wyoming; Tony Trippe, Rochester Inst. of Tech.; Jerome Weist, Univ. of Utah; William G. Wells, Jr., The George Washington Univ.; Susan Williams, Northern Arizona State Univ.; James Willman, Univ. of Bridgeport; James Yarmus, Stevens Institute of Technology; and Charles I. Zigelman, San Diego State Univ.
JACK MEREDITH
Broyhill Distinguished Scholar and Chair in Operations, Emeritus Wake Forest University, P.O. Box 7659 Winston-Salem, NC 27109 meredijr@wfu.edu http://business.wfu.edu/directory/jack-meredith
SCOTT M. SHAFER
Associate Dean and Professor of Management Wake Forest University, P.O. Box 7659 Winston-Salem, NC 27109
Expediting Los Angeles Freeway Repairs after the Earthquake 349
Thirty Days to Rescue 357
Benefits of Resource Constraining at Pennsylvania Electric 371
Architectural Associates, Inc. 378
CASE: D. U. Singer Hospital Products Corp. 384
READING: Let The Games Begin—Now 387
PART III: PROJECT EXECUTION
10 Monitoring and Information Systems 389
10.1 The Planning–Monitoring–Controlling Cycle 390
10.2 Information Needs and Reporting 394
10.3 Earned Value Analysis 398
PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE
Using Project Management Software to Schedule the Olympic Games 391
Using Earned Value to Monitor Governmental Archiving and Records Costs 404
Success through Earned Value at Texas Instruments 410
CASE: The Project Manager/Customer Interface 415
READING: Raise The Red Flags 418
11 Project Control 421
11.1 The Fundamental Purposes of Control 425
11.2 Three Types of Control Processes 427
11.3 The Design of Control Systems 436
11.4 Control of Change and Scope Creep 442
PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE
Regaining Control of Nuclear Fusion 424
Extensive Controls for San Francisco’s Metro Turnback Project 427
Tracking Scope Creep: A Project Manager Responds 439
Major Scope Creep in Boston’s “Big Dig” 444
Better Control of Development Projects at Johnson Controls 445
CASE: The Project Manager/Customer Interface (B) 451
READING: Ford Motor Co.: Electrical/Electronic Systems Engineering 453
12 Project Auditing 459
12.1 Purposes of Evaluation—Goals of the System 460
12.2 The Project Audit 463
12.3 The Project Audit Life Cycle 469
12.4 Some Essentials of an Audit/Evaluation 472
12.5 Measurement 474
PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE
Lessons from Auditing 110 Client/Server and Open Systems Projects 463
Auditing a Troubled Project at Atlantic States Chemical Laboratories 469
CASE: Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD): Five Failures and Counting (B) 479
READING: An Assessment of Postproject Reviews 482
13 Project Closure and Benefits Realization 488
13.1 The Varieties of Project Closure 489
13.2 When to Close a Project 492
13.3 The Closure Process 497
13.4 The Final Report—A Project History 503
13.5 Benefits Realization 505
13.6 Afterword 507
PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE
Nucor’s Approach to Closure by Addition 491
Twelve Hospital Handoff Projects 493
Terminating the Superconducting Super Collider Project 497
When You Have to Kill a Project 503
AUTHOR INDEX 511
SUBJECT INDEX 513
Please visit http://www.wiley.com/college/meredith for Appendices A through D.
APPENDIX A Probability and Statistics (online)
APPENDIX B Answers to Even-Numbered Problems (online)
APPENDIX C Technological Forecasting (online)
APPENDIX D Creativity and Idea Generation (online)
Projects in Contemporary Organizations
Growth and new developments in project management continue to accelerate in our society, in practice, and in our research publications. Beyond the attention previously (and still) paid to project management, program management, project portfolios, project maturity, project management offices (PMOs), Agile, and other such project issues, we are now seeing attention also directed to mega-projects, organizational project management, project governance, strategic projects, benefit realization, the duties of the project sponsor, the meaning of executive commitment, and other such issues. Projects are getting much more sophisticated and complex, involving multiple organizations and billions of dollars. And even though our knowledge of how to successfully execute standard projects has resulted in much better success rates in practice, the rates of success for less traditional projects, such as strategic and multiorganizational projects, are still poor. Part of the reason for this is just now becoming clear that projects are only the middle portion of a set of activities involving the recognition of a need, the selection of a project to meet it, designing a governance structure for the project, executing the project, and the tasks needed to ensure the benefits of the project are realized. These activities are now also being focused on and we hope to thereby see better success rates for our strategic and more complex projects.
The past several decades have been marked by rapid growth in the use of project management as a means by which organizations achieve their objectives. In the past, most projects were external to the organization—building a new skyscraper, designing a commercial ad campaign, launching a rocket—but the growth in the use of projects lately has primarily been in the area of projects internal to organizations: developing a new product, opening a new branch, implementing a new enterprise software system, improving the services provided to customers, and achieving strategic objectives. As exhilarating as outside projects are, successfully executing internal projects is even more satisfying in that the organization has substantially improved its ability to execute more efficiently, effectively, or quickly, resulting in an agency or business that can even better contribute to society and simultaneously enhancing its own competitive strength. Fundamentally, project management provides an organization with powerful tools that improve its ability to plan, implement, and control its activities as well as the ways in which it utilizes its people and resources.
In this introductory chapter to project management, we begin by defining precisely what a project is. Both the objectives and characteristics of projects are also discussed to help further define them. Next, we address the emergence of project management, the forces that have fostered project management, and recent trends in project management. Following this, we describe the project life cycle. Finally, the chapter concludes with an overview of the structure of the remainder of the text. In later chapters, we will get into the newer topics of benefit realization, mega-projects, project governance, and other such issues.
1.1 The Definition of a “Project”
Formally, a project may be defined as “A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result” (PMBOK®, Project Management Institute, 2013, p. 417). Consistent with this definition, there is a rich variety of projects to be found in our society. Although some may argue that the construction of the Tower of Babel or the Egyptian pyramids were some of the first “projects,” it is probable that cavemen formed a project to gather the raw material for mammoth stew. It is certainly true that the construction of Boulder Dam and Edison’s invention of the light bulb were projects by any sensible definition. Modern project management, however, is usually said to have begun with the Manhattan Project. In its early days, project management was used mainly for very large, complex research and development (R&D) projects like the development of the Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile and similar military weapon systems. Massive construction programs were also organized as projects, including the construction of dams, ships, refineries, and freeways.
As the techniques of project management were developed, mostly by the military, the use of project organization began to spread. Private construction firms found that organizing work on the basis of projects or a project-based organization was helpful on smaller projects, such as the building of a warehouse or an apartment complex. Automotive companies used project organization to develop new automobile models. Both General Electric and Pratt & Whitney used project organization to develop new jet aircraft engines for airlines, as well as the Air Force. Project management has even been used to develop new models of shoes and ships. More recently, the use of project management by international organizations, and especially organizations producing services rather than products, has grown rapidly. Advertising campaigns, global mergers, and capital acquisitions are often handled as projects, and the methods have spread to the nonprofit sector. Weddings, SCOUT-O-RAMAS, fund drives, election campaigns, parties, and recitals have all made use of project management. Most striking has been the widespread adoption of project management techniques for the development of computer software.
To add to our vocabulary in discussions of project management, it is sometimes useful to make a distinction among terms such as project, program, task, and work packages. The military, the source of most of these terms, generally uses the term program to refer to an exceptionally large, long-range objective that is broken down into a set of projects. These projects are divided further into tasks, which are, in turn, split into work packages that are themselves composed of work units. Of course, exceptions to this hierarchical nomenclature abound. For example, the Manhattan Project was a huge “program,” but a “task force” was created to investigate the many potential futures of a large steel company. In the broadest sense, a project is a specific, finite task to be accomplished. Whether large- or small-scale or whether long- or short-run is not particularly relevant. What is relevant is that the project be seen as a unit. There are, however, some objectives that all projects share and some attributes that characterize projects.
Three Project Objectives: The “Triple Constraint” or “Iron Triangle”
While multimillion-dollar, 5-year projects capture public attention, the overwhelming majority of all projects are comparatively small—though nonetheless important to doer and user alike. They involve outcomes, or deliverables, such as a new floor for a professional basketball arena, a new insurance policy to protect against a specific casualty loss, a new website, a new casing for a four-wheel-drive minivan transmission, a new industrial floor cleanser, the installation of a new method for peer review of patient care in
a hospital, even the development of new software to help manage projects. The list could be extended almost without limit. These undertakings have much in common with their larger counterparts. Importantly, they have the same general objectives—specified deliverables (also commonly known as scope1), a specific deadline (time), and budget (cost). We refer to these as “direct” project objectives or goals.
There is a tendency to think of a project solely in terms of its outcome—that is, its scope. But the time at which the outcome is available is itself a part of the outcome, as is the cost entailed in achieving the outcome. The completion of a building on time and on budget is quite a different outcome from the completion of the same physical structure a year late or 20 percent over budget, or both.
Indeed, even the concept of scope is perhaps more complex than is apparent. In particular, it is important to recognize that the expectations of the client are an inherent part of the project specifications, which unfortunately tend to evolve over time. To consider the client’s desires as different from the project specifications is to court conflict between client and project team. All too often projects begin with the client specifying a desired outcome. Then the project team designs and implements the project. Then the client views the result of the team’s ideas. In following this approach, differences between the client’s expectations and the project team’s designs commonly develop as a project proceeds due to both changing expectations on the client’s part as they learn new information and limitations on the team’s part about what they can deliver. As a result, meeting the client’s latest desires may not be well reflected by the initially specified scope of the project. The expectations of client and project team therefore need to be continuously realigned and integrated throughout the entire project, but they frequently are not. As a result, we believe in making an effort upfront and throughout the project to ensure that the nebulous elements of the client’s evolving expectations and desires are identified and realigned with the client’s latest scope (though possibly at additional cost). We discuss these issues in more detail in the coming chapters.
The three direct project objectives are shown in Figure 1.1, with the specified project objectives on the axes. This illustration implies that there is some “function” that relates them, one to another—and so there is! Although the functions vary from project to project, and from time to time for a given project, we will refer to these relationships, or trade-offs, throughout this book. The two primary tasks of the project manager (the “PM”) are to manage these trade-offs and to anticipate and address risks to the project. In addition to the direct project goals, organizations often have a unique set of ancillary project objectives/goals that are often unarticulated but nevertheless important to the success of the project.
Ancillary goals include improving the organization’s project management competency and methods, developing individuals’ managerial experience through project management, gaining a foothold in a new market, and similar goals. In a more basic sense, those with a stake in the project (the PM, project team, senior management, the client, and other project stakeholders) have an interest in making
Direct project goals—scope, cost, and time.
1The term “scope” is typically used when differentiating between what is included and what is excluded in something, but in project management the term has come to mean the specified deliverables. The Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) defines Scope as follows: “The sum of the products, services, and results to be provided as a project.” We will refer to the PMBOK guide frequently throughout this book and use the icon seen here in the margin to draw the student’s attention to this important reference (see the PMI reference in the “Bibliography” section). If particular PMBOK figures, tables, sections, or chapters are relevant to the discussion, we note this under the icon as, for example, Section 3.2.
FIGURE 1.1
PMBOK Glossary
the project a success. Shenhar et al. (1997) have concluded that project success has four dimensions: (1) project efficiency, (2) impact on the customer, (3) the business impact on the organization, and (4) opening new opportunities for the future. The first two are clearly part of what we have defined as the project’s direct objectives; the last two are typical of what are frequently unspecified ancillary goals.
One other crucial, but unstated, trade-off that a PM must consider is the health of the project team as well as the rest of the organization. The PM cannot burn out the team in an attempt to achieve the direct objectives, nor destroy the organization’s functional departments in an attempt to meet the project’s goals. Another factor in making project trade-offs is the project’s environment, that is, those things or persons outside the project, and often outside the sponsoring organization, that affect the project or are affected by it. Examples of this environment might be environmental groups, trade unions, competitive firms, and the like. We will deal with these issues in more detail in Chapter 12.
From the early days of project management, the direct project objectives of time, cost, and scope (as generally agreed to by the client and the organization actually doing the project) have been accepted as the primary determinants of project success or failure. In the past 25 years or so, other direct and ancillary objectives have been suggested. These did not replace the traditional time, cost, and scope, but were added as also relevant. For the most part, however, Chapters 1 through 11 will focus mainly on the traditional direct objectives.
Characteristics of Projects
There are three characteristics that all projects share and a number of other characteristics that are common to projects but not universal. We begin our discussion with the three universal characteristics and then direct our attention to several of the common characteristics.
The first universal characteristic of projects is that every project is unique. Though the desired end results may have been achieved elsewhere, every project has some unique elements. No two construction or R&D projects are precisely alike. Though it is clear that construction projects are usually more routine than R&D projects, some degree of customization is a characteristic of projects. In addition to the presence of risk, as noted earlier, this characteristic means that projects, by their nature, cannot be completely reduced to routine. The PM’s importance is emphasized because, as a devotee of management by exception, the PM will find there are a great many exceptions to manage by.
The second universal characteristic is that a project is a one-time occurrence with a well-defined and specific set of desired end results. (We discuss poorly defined, or “quasi-” projects a bit later.) These end results are referred to as the “scope,” or sometimes required “performance,” of the project. The project can be divided into subtasks that must be accomplished in order to achieve the project goals. The project is complex enough that the subtasks require careful coordination and control in terms of timing, precedence, cost, and scope. Often, the project itself must be coordinated with other projects being carried out by the same parent organization.
The third universal characteristic of projects is that they have a finite duration. There is a clear date when the project is launched and a corresponding due date or deadline. Furthermore, like organic entities and their growth curve, projects have life cycles. Often starting with a slow beginning and progressing to a buildup of size, then peaking, beginning a decline, and finally must be closed by some due date. (Also like organic entities, they often resist closure.) Some projects end by being phased into the normal, ongoing operations of the parent organization. The life cycle is discussed further in Section 1.3, where an important exception to the usual description of the growth curve is mentioned. There are several different ways in which to view project life cycles. These will be discussed in more detail later.
Interdependencies
While not universally true, projects often interact with other projects being carried out simultaneously by their parent organization. Typically, these interactions take the form of competition for scarce resources between projects, and much of Chapter 9 is devoted to dealing with these issues. While such interproject interactions are common, projects
Project Management in Practice
A Unique Method for Traveler-Tracking at Copenhagen Airport
IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, was working with Copenhagen Airport to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of the management of their airport through a new approach: traveler-tracking, but without invading people’s privacy. The 3-year project focused on a unique, low-cost approach—capturing the Bluetooth signals from passengers’ phones with two electronic readers that cost only $30 each. At the time, not everyone had a smartphone that emits signals, of course, but about 7 percent of the passengers did, enough to provide a random sample for tracking. To ensure travelers’ privacy, a crucial stakeholder in this project, they collected only a portion of each signal and deleted the addresses. They also informed the public about the project on the airport’s website and on-site as well. To encourage positive traveler response to the project, they provided alerts to passengers willing to synchronize their Bluetooth to receive information regarding when their plane was boarding and a map to the gate.
Knowing when people were entering and leaving Security allowed the airport to balance the staff at Security so lines didn’t build up, thereby shortening the time passengers
must wait, while also reducing over- and understaffing of screeners. In addition, the information allows them to post wait times at the check-in gates. The data also lets the airport to determine which shops and areas are getting the most traffic so they can shift usage of facility space to better serve the travelers and the friends and families accompanying them. Moreover, when construction and rerouting changes traffic flows, they can determine the impact on passengers and take action to reduce the inconvenience.
Questions
1. Are the triple constraints of this project clear? What are they?
2. What was unique about this project? What was the main conflict?
3. Why are the travelers themselves a stakeholder in this project, since most of them won’t even know they are being tracked?
4. How widespread do you think this technology will become? What uses will be garnered from it? Do any of them concern you?
Source: S. F. Gale, “Data on the Go,” PM Network, Vol. 24.
always interact with the parent organization’s standard, ongoing operations. Although the functional departments of an organization (marketing, finance, operations, and the like) interact with one another in regular, patterned ways, the patterns of interaction between projects and these departments tend to be changeable. Marketing may be involved at the beginning and end of a project, but not in the middle. Operations may have major involvement throughout. Finance is often involved at the beginning and accounting (the controller) at the end, as well as at periodic reporting times. The PM must keep all these interactions clear and maintain the appropriate interrelationships with all external groups.
Projects also typically have limited budgets, both for personnel and other resources. Often the budget is implied rather than detailed, particularly concerning personnel, but it is strictly limited. The attempt to obtain additional resources (or any resources) frequently leads to the next attribute—conflict.
More than most managers, the PM lives in a world characterized by conflict. Projects compete with functional departments for resources and personnel. More serious, with the growing proliferation of projects, is the project-versus-project conflict for resources within multiproject organizations. The members of the project team are in almost constant conflict for the project’s resources and for leadership roles in solving project problems. The PM must be expert in conflict resolution, but we will see later that there are helpful types of conflict. The PM must recognize the difference.
Conventional thinking suggests that different stakeholders (e.g., clients, the parent organization, the project team, and the public) define success and failure in different ways. For example, the client wants changes and the parent organization wants profits. Likewise, the individuals working on projects are often responsible to two bosses at the same time: a functional manager and the PM. Under such conditions, conflict can arise when the two bosses have different priorities and objectives.
While the conventional view tends to regard conflict as a rather ubiquitous part of working on projects, more recently others have challenged this view. For example, John Mackey, cofounder and co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, suggests in his recent book Conscious Capitalism (2013) that satisfying stakeholder needs is not a zero-sum game where satisfying one stakeholder must come at the expense of another. Rather, Mackey suggests a better approach that is to identify opportunities to satisfy all stakeholder needs simultaneously. One way to accomplish this is to identify ways to align the goals of all stakeholders with the purpose of the project. As was mentioned earlier, the primary role of the PM is to manage the trade-offs. However, as Mackey warns, if we look for trade-offs we will always find trade-offs. On the other hand, if we look for synergies across the stakeholder base, we can often find them too. The clear lesson for project managers is to not be too quick to assume trade-offs exist among competing project objectives and stakeholder groups.
Nonprojects and Quasi-Projects
If the characteristics listed earlier define a project, it is appropriate to ask if there are nonprojects. The use of a manufacturing line to produce a flow of standard products is a nonproject. The production of weekly employment reports, the preparation of school lunches, the delivery of mail, the flight of Delta 1288 from Dallas to Dulles, checking your e-mail all are nonprojects. While one might argue that each of these activities is, to some degree, unique, it is not their uniqueness that characterizes them. They are all routine. They are tasks that are performed over and over again. This is not true of projects. Each project is a one-time event. Even the construction of a section of interstate highway is a project. No two miles are alike and constructing them demands constant adaptation to the differences in terrain and substructure of the earth on which the roadbed is to be laid. Projects cannot be managed adequately by the managerial routines used for routine work.
Project Management in Practice
The Smart-Grid Revolution Starts in Boulder, Colorado
Boulder’s utility company, Xcel Energy, decided that it was time to create a roadmap for a 3-year, $100 million “smartgrid” electrical system that would span the entire city. There were no standards, benchmarks, or tested procedures for converting a city from a conventional electric-grid system to a fully integrated smart one, though it was known that if customers can monitor the true cost of their energy, they will automatically reduce their usage, by up to 30 percent in some cases. Of course, the smart grid would also allow Xcel to reroute power around bottlenecked lines, detect power outages, identify service risks, cut its use of road crews, read customer meters remotely, reduce outages, and identify false alarms more quickly.
Xcel brought in a mass of partners on the project, such as Accenture consulting for engineering, energy industry consultants, leading technologists, business leaders, IT experts, and, of course, Boulder city managers, leaders, and user-citizens. The public and private partners were divided into eight teams, all led by a senior PM working with a PMO. With all these different stakeholders, with different objectives and interests, it was crucial to have steady, reliable communication to keep everyone up to date and the project on track. Security and privacy were high-priority items on the project, and communication with the community was facilitated through town hall meetings, the local media, tours of project sites, and even a touring trailer allowing citizens to get a hands-on demonstration of the smart-grid technology. With the completion of the project, Xcel is now measuring its many benefits and expects it will take a year to collect and analyze all the data across all the seasons. The project partners have also created an industry consortium to establish industry standards for future, larger smart-grid projects. They now see Boulder as a living laboratory from which they can continue to learn and thereby successfully deploy smart grids across the entire country.
Questions
1. Are the triple constraints of this project clear? List each of them.
2. Given the range of benefits listed for the new technology, what interdependencies and conflicts do you suspect smart grids will create for utilities?
3. A major portion of this project had to do with carefully managing all the stakeholders. List those mentioned in the article and divide them into the four groups mentioned above. Do any stakeholders fall into more than one of the groups?
4. What conflicts do you suspect might have occurred among all the different stakeholders in this project?
5. Why do you think Xcel agreed to invest $100 million in this risky experiment? What might have been their ancillary goals?
Source: S. F. Gale, “A Closer Look,” PM Network, Vol. 24.
In addition to projects and nonprojects, there are also quasi-projects: “Bill, would you look into this?” “Mia, we need to finish this by Friday’s meeting.” “Samir, can you find out about this before we meet with the customer?” Most people would consider that they have just been assigned a project, depending on who “we” and “you” is supposed to include. Yet there may be no specific task identified, no specific budget given, and no specific deadline defined. Are they still projects, and if so, can project management methods be used to manage them? Certainly! The scope, schedule, and budget have been implied rather than carefully delineated by the words “this,” “meet,” and “we” (meaning “you”) or “you” (which
may mean a group or team). In such cases, it is best to try to quickly nail down the scope, schedule, and budget as precisely as possible, but without antagonizing the manager who assigned the project. You may need to ask for additional help or other resources if the work is needed soon—is it needed soon? How accurate/thorough/detailed does it need to be? And other such questions.
One common quasi-project in the information systems area is where the project includes discovery of the scope or requirements of the task itself (and possibly also the budget and deadline). How can you plan a project when you don’t know the scope requirements? In this case, the project is, in fact, determining the scope requirements (and possibly the budget and deadline also). If the entire set of work (including the discovery) has been assigned to you as a project, then the best approach is to set this determination as the first “milestone” in the project, at which point the resources, budget, deadline, capabilities, personnel, and any other matters will be reviewed to determine if they are sufficient to the new project requirements. Alternatively, the customer may be willing to pay for the project on a “cost-plus” basis, and call a halt to the effort when the benefits no longer justify the cost.
Project Management in Practice
The Olympic Torch Relay Project
Getting the Olympic Flame, known as the Olympic Torch Relay, to the Olympic Games is no simple matter. Generally, the Torch Relay has gotten longer and more complex with every Olympic event. In the 1936 Olympics, the torch left from the original site of the Olympics, the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece, and traveled through seven countries to reach its final destination at the games in Berlin. For the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the flame traveled 137,000 kilometers (about 85,000 miles)! This increasing length and complexity are driven by the realization of host country citizens that it is a rare opportunity to have the Olympic torch pass through your hometown and the corresponding goal of the Olympic Committee to touch as many lives as possible in a positive way.
As an example, the planning for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Torch Relay (see figure) took 2 years, cost over $20 million, and involved an 84-day, 42-state campaign using 10,000 runners to carry the torch for 15,000 miles! Accompanying the runners was a 40-vehicle caravan carrying security officers, media personnel, medical personnel, computers, telecommunications gear, clothing, food, and spare lanterns with extra flames in case the original torch went out. The caravan included: 50 cell phones; 120 radios; 30 cars; 10 motorcycles; and clothing for 10,000 runners, 10,000 volunteers, as well as 2,500 escort runners.
The Torch Relay is also a major marketing campaign, primarily for the relay’s sponsors. Thus, accompanying the Atlanta-bound caravan were trucks hawking Olympic memorabilia: t-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball caps, tickets to the soccer matches, and on and on. In addition to retail commercialism, a number of companies were piggybacking on the
Torch Relay to further their own commercial interests: IBM, Motorola, BellSouth, Texaco, BMW, Lee, Coca-Cola, and so on. We can only wonder how far and complex the Torch Relay will be in the next Olympics!
Questions
1. Which of the three universal and three common characteristics of projects are displayed in the regular torch relay?
2. Since this is such a regular project—every 4 years since 1936—would you consider it a nonproject, or a quasi-project? Why, or why not?
3. Is the Torch Relay another part of the Olympics themselves, perhaps a subproject?
Sources: G. Ruffenach, “Getting the Olympic Flame to Atlanta Won’t Be a Simple Cross-Country Run,” The Wall Street Journal, 1996; http://olympics.india-server.com/torch-relay.html; www.bladesplace.id.au/olympic-games-candidates.html.
Why Project Management?
It is popular to ask “Why can’t they run government the way I run my business?” In the case of project management, however, business and other organizations learned from government, not the other way around. A lion’s share of the credit for the development of the techniques and practices of project management belongs to the military, which faced a series of major tasks that simply were not achievable by traditional organizations operating in traditional ways. NASA’s Apollo space program and, more recently, Boston’s “Big Dig” tunnel and freeways project and the development of Boeing’s 787 “Dreamliner” are a few of the many instances of the application of these specially developed management approaches to extraordinarily complex projects. Following such examples, nonmilitary government sectors, private industry, public service agencies, and volunteer organizations have all used project management to increase their effectiveness. For example, most firms in the computer software business routinely develop their output as projects or groups of projects.
Project management has emerged because the characteristics of our contemporary society demand the development of new methods of management. Of the many forces involved, three are paramount: (1) the exponential expansion of human knowledge; (2) the growing demand for a broad range of complex, sophisticated, customized goods and services; and (3) the evolution of worldwide competitive markets for the production and consumption of goods and services. All three forces combine to mandate the use of teams to solve problems that used to be solvable by individuals. These three forces combine to increase greatly the complexity of goods and services produced plus the complexity of the processes used to produce them. This, in turn, leads to the need for more sophisticated systems to control both outcomes and processes.
The basic purpose for initiating a project is to accomplish specific goals. The reason for organizing the task as a project is to focus the responsibility and authority for the attainment of the goals on an individual or small group. In spite of the fact that the PM often lacks authority at a level consistent with his or her responsibility, the manager is expected to coordinate and integrate all activities needed to reach the project’s goals. In particular, the project form of organization allows the manager to be responsive to (1) the client and the environment, (2) identify and correct problems at an early date, (3) make timely decisions about trade-offs between conflicting project goals, and (4) ensure that managers of the separate tasks that comprise the project do not optimize the performance of their individual tasks at the expense of the total project—that is, that they do not suboptimize.
Actual experience with project management (such as through Six-Sigma projects) indicates that the majority of organizations using it experience better control and better customer relations and apparently an increase in their project’s return on investment (Ibbs and Kwak 1997). A significant proportion of users also report shorter development times, lower costs, higher quality and reliability, and higher profit margins. Other reported advantages include a sharper orientation toward results, better interdepartmental coordination, and higher worker morale.
On the negative side, most organizations report that project management results in greater organizational complexity. Many also report that project organization increases the likelihood that organizational policy will be violated—not a surprising outcome, considering the degree of autonomy required for the PM. A few firms reported higher costs, more management difficulties, and low personnel utilization. As we will see in Chapter 5, the disadvantages of PM stem from exactly the same sources as its advantages. The disadvantages seem to be the price one pays for the advantages. On the whole, the balance weighs in favor of project organization if the work to be done is appropriate for a project.
The tremendous diversity of uses to which project management can be put has had an interesting, and generally unfortunate, side effect. While we assert that all projects are to some extent unique, there is an almost universal tendency for those working on some
specific types of projects to argue “Software (or construction, or R&D, or marketing, or machine maintenance, or . . . ) projects are different and you can’t expect us to schedule (or budget, or organize, or manage, or . . . ) in the same way that other kinds of projects do.” Disagreement with such pleas for special treatment is central to the philosophy of this book. The fundamental similarities between the processes involved in managing all sorts of projects, be they long or short, product- or service-oriented, parts of all-encompassing programs or stand-alone, are far more pervasive than are their differences.
There are also real limitations on project management. For example, the mere creation of a project may be an admission that the parent organization and its managers cannot accomplish the desired outcomes through the functional organization. Further, conflict seems to be a necessary side effect. As we noted, the PM often lacks the authority-ofposition that is consistent with the assigned level of responsibility. Therefore, the PM must depend on the goodwill of managers in the parent organization for some of the necessary resources. Of course, if the goodwill is not forthcoming, the PM may ask senior officials in the parent organization for their assistance. But to use such power often reflects poorly on the skills of the PM, and while it may get cooperation in the instance at hand, it may backfire in the long run.
We return to the subject of the advantages, disadvantages, and limitations of the project form of organization later. For the moment, it is sufficient to point out that project management is difficult even when everything goes well. When things go badly, PMs have been known to turn gray overnight and take to hard drink! The trouble is that project organization is the only feasible way to accomplish certain goals. It is literally not possible to design and build a major weapon system, for example, in a timely and economically acceptable manner, except by project organization. The stronger the emphasis on achievement of results in an organization, the more likely it will be to adopt some form of project management. The stake or risks in using project management may be high, but no more so than in any other form of management; and for projects, it is less so. Tough as it may be, it is all we have—and it works!
All in all, the life of a PM is exciting, rewarding, at times frustrating, and tends to be at the center of things in most organizations. Project management is now being recognized as a “career path” in a growing number of firms, particularly those conducting projects with lives extending more than a year or two. In such organizations, PMs may have to function for several years, and it is important to provide promotion potential for them. It is also common for large firms to put their more promising young managers through a “tour of duty” during which they manage one or more projects (or parts of projects). This serves as a good test of the aspiring manager’s ability to coordinate and manage complex tasks and to achieve results in a politically challenging environment where negotiation skills are required.
Forces Fostering Project Management
First, the expansion of knowledge allows an increasing number of academic disciplines to be used in solving problems associated with the development, production, and distribution of goods and services. Second, satisfying the continuing demand for more complex and customized products and services depends on our ability to make product design an integrated and inherent part of our production and distribution systems. Third, worldwide markets force us to include cultural and environmental differences in our managerial decisions about what, where, when, and how to produce and distribute output. The requisite knowledge does not reside in any one individual, no matter how well educated or knowledgeable. Thus, under these conditions, teams are used for making decisions and taking action. This calls for a high level of coordination and cooperation between groups of people not particularly used to such interactions. Largely geared to the mass production of
simpler goods, traditional organizational structures and management systems are simply not adequate to the task, unlike project management.
The organizational response to the forces noted above cannot take the form of an instantaneous transformation from the old to the new. To be successful, the transition must be systematic, but it tends to be slow and tortuous for most enterprises. Accomplishing organizational change is a natural application of project management, and many firms have set up projects to implement their goals for strategic and tactical change.
Another important societal force is the intense competition among institutions, both profit and not-for-profit, fostered by our economic system resulting in organizational “crusades” such as “total quality management,” “Six-Sigma,”2 and particularly prominent these days: “supply chain management.” The competition that these crusades engenders puts extreme pressure on organizations to make their complex, customized outputs available as quickly as possible. “Time-to-market” is critical. Responses must come faster, decisions must be made sooner, and results must occur more quickly. Imagine the communications problems alone. Information and knowledge are growing explosively, but the time permissible to locate and use the appropriate knowledge is decreasing.
In addition, these forces operate in a society that assumes that technology can do anything. The fact is, this assumption is reasonably true, within the bounds of nature’s fundamental laws. The problem lies not in this assumption so much as in a concomitant assumption that allows society to ignore both the economic and noneconomic costs associated with technological progress until some dramatic event focuses our attention on the costs (e.g., the global financial crisis, the Gulf oil spill). At times, our faith in technology is disturbed by difficulties and threats arising from its careless implementation, as in the case of industrial waste, but on the whole, we seem remarkably tolerant of technological change, such as the overwhelmingly easy acceptance of communication by e-mail and shopping on the Internet.
Finally, the projects we undertake are large and getting larger. The modern advertising company, for example, advanced from blanket print ads to regionally focused television ads to personally focused Internet ads. As each new capability extends our grasp, it serves as the base for new demands that force us to extend our reach even farther. Projects increase in size and complexity because the more we can do, the more we try to do.
The projects that command the most public attention tend to be large, complex, and multiorganizational endeavors. Often, such endeavors are both similar to and different from previous projects with which we may be more or less familiar. Similarities with the past provide a base from which to start, but the differences imbue every project with considerable risk. The complexities and multiorganizational aspects of projects require that many parts be put together so that the project’s objectives—deliverables, time (or schedule), and cost—are met and desired benefits achieved.
In his fascinating book, Rescuing Prometheus (Hughes, 1998), technology historian Thomas Hughes examines four large-scale projects that required the use of a nontraditional management style, a nontraditional organizational design, and a nontraditional approach to problem solving in order to achieve their objectives. These huge projects—the Semiautomatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense system, the Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the Boston Central Artery/Tunnel (better known as “the big dig”), and the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Internet (ARPANET)—are all characterized by extraordinarily diverse knowledge and information input requirements.3 The size and technological complexity of these projects required input from a large number of autonomous organizations—governmental, industrial, and academic—that usually did
2Six-sigma (see Pyzdek and Keller, 2009) itself involves projects, usually of a process improvement type that involves the use of many project management tools (Chapter 8), teamwork (Chapters 5 and 12), quality tools such as “benchmarking” (Chapter 11), and even audits (Chapter 12).
3Hughes’s term for this is “transdisciplinary” (across disciplines), which is rather more accurate than the usual “interdisciplinary” (between disciplines).
not work cooperatively with other organizations, were sometimes competitors, and could be philosophical and/or political opponents. Further, any actions taken to deal with parts of the total project often had disturbing impacts on many other parts of the system.
Obviously, these projects were not the first complex, large-scale projects carried out in this country or elsewhere. For example, the Manhattan Project—devoted to the development of the atomic bomb—was such a project. The Manhattan Project, however, was the sole and full-time work for a large majority of the individuals and organizations working on it. The organizations contributing to the projects Hughes describes were, for the most part, working on many other tasks. For example, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Pentagon, IBM, Bell Labs (now Lucent Technologies), RAND Corporation, the Massachusetts Department of Highways, and a great many other organizations were all highly involved in one or more of these projects while still carrying on their usual work. The use of multiple organizations (both within and outside of the sponsoring firm) as contributors to a project is no longer remarkable. Transdisciplinary projects are more the rule than the exception.
These revolutions and modifications in the style of management and organization of projects will be reflected throughout this book. We will identify the specific tasks facing top management, project executives, and PMs. We investigate the nature of the projects for which the PM is responsible; the trade-off, risk analysis, and other skills that must be used to manage projects; and the means by which the manager can bring the project to a successful conclusion.
The Project Manager and Project Management Organizations
While managing the trade-offs, the PM is expected to integrate all aspects of the project, ensure that the proper knowledge and resources are available when and where needed, and above all, ensure that the expected results are produced in a timely, cost-effective manner. The complexity of the problems faced by the PM, taken together with the rapid growth in the number of project-oriented organizations, has contributed to the professionalization of project management. In the early days of projects, being a PM was known as the “accidental profession.” There was no training or career path in project management; you just became one by accident. That has now all changed and the role has become “professionalized.”
One of the major international organizations dedicated to this professionalization is the Project Management Institute (PMI®, www.pmi.org), established in the United States of America in 1969. By 1990, the PMI had 7,500 members, and by 2017, it had exploded to 450,000 members in more than 190 countries (see Figure 1.2). This exponential growth is indicative of the rapid growth in the use of projects, but also reflects the importance of the PMI as a force in the development of project management as a profession. Its mission is to foster the growth of project management as well as “building professionalism” in the field through its many worldwide chapters, its meetings and seminars around the globe, and its journals, books, and other publications. However, there are many other project management organizations as well, such as the Association for Project Management (APM; www.apm .org.uk) headquartered in the United Kingdom, which started in the early 1970s and serves all of Europe. As well, there is the International Project Management Association (IPMA; www.ipma.ch) headquartered in Switzerland, which began in 1965 and serves a global constituency.
Another major objective of these organizations is to codify the areas of knowledge required for competent project management. As a result, the APM has its APM Body
of Knowledge, PMI has its project management body of knowledge, PMBOK® (Project Management Institute, 5th edition, 2013), as well as a new 3rd edition of Standard for Program Management and a new 3rd edition of Standard for Portfolio Management. Other groups have similar project management bodies of knowledge, as well as credentials (see the following text), such as PRINCE2 (PRojects IN Controlled Environments) used primarily in the information systems industry and employed extensively by the UK government. Table 1.1 illustrates the difference between the APM BOK and PMBOK®
All these compilations of knowledge are meant to serve as the fundamental basis for education for PM. To certify that active PM understand and can competently apply these bodies of knowledge, various associations offer credentials certifying to this proficiency. For example, PMI offers a certificate called the Project Management Professional (PMP®) that includes a group of education, experience, and testing requirements to obtain. More recently, PMI has added seven more certificates, including one for advanced program managers, called the Program Management Professional (PgMP®), another for developing PMs, the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM®), which has less educational and experience requirements, and five more specialized certificates, including one in Agile project management. (More information on these certificates is contained in the Appendix to this chapter.) As a result of all this activity, the profession has flourished, with the result that many colleges and universities offer education and training in project management, and some offer specialized degree programs in the area.
Although obtaining more education in the field is always desirable, and being certified or credentialed verifies that knowledge to a potential employer, the recipient of such proof must avoid preaching the “body of knowledge” bible excessively lest they find themselves again seeking employment. As one employer stated (Starkweather and Stevens, 2011, p. 37): “It is useful background info, but fresh PMPs® want to ram that knowledge down clients’ throats and clients are not willing to pay for it.” It turns out that although recruiters like to see certification on a resumé, executives are much less interested in it and wish to see performance instead (pp. 36, 38, 39): “There is no correlation between a good PM and certification based on my 15 years of experience,” and “Would like the PMP® program to
PMBOK
FIGURE 1.2 Project Management Institute growth history.
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CHAPTER I THE CHEVALIER DE FROTTÉ
At dawn, on April 7, 1790, a singular disturbance was going on in the streets of Lille. In the northern districts, not far from the citadel, troops of soldiers stood all along the avenues, filled the squares, ransacked the courtyards of the houses. Shots went off every instant, and the extraordinary thing was that this fusillade from the soldiers was directed against other soldiers. In the midst of the smoke, the deafening noise, and the cries of the awakened townsfolk, were to be seen the blue uniforms, with sky-blue facings, of the Regiment of the Crown, one of the four quartered in the garrison.[2]
Every horseman who appeared was greeted with successive volleys; evidently the combat was to the death between the light cavalry of Normandy, who charged upon the pavements or fought on foot with their muskets, and the grenadiers of the Crown and of the Royal-Vaisseaux.
Moreover, there was no order in this street-fight. The officers on both sides were absent, and if by any chance some had been present, the excitement and anger visible upon the assailants’ faces were a proof that their intervention would have been useless.
Riot, in fact, was reigning in the city of Lille, the capital of the province; and this time law and order were being upset by those whose duty it was to make them respected. But the town, with its 80,000 inhabitants, had for months been going, nervously and anxiously, through a succession of anything but encouraging episodes. The convocation of the States General, the formation of the Garde Nationale, the creation of the Municipality, and, two months earlier (in February), the administrative upset which thrilled the province—all this, added to the distress of the kingdom, to the
general misery, to the exaggerated price of food, and to the ruin of commerce, had brought about several outbreaks in this manufacturing town, naturally dependent upon its trade for its wellbeing. And, at the very moment that there came from Paris the most alarming news—that is, on April 29, 1789 (coinciding almost day for day with the sacking of the Reveillon factory) pillage had its first innings at Lille also; the bakeries were invaded; and three months later four houses were attacked by the mob and burnt down.
Of the troops which then composed the garrison of Lille, one part had taken up their quarters in the town; these were the regiments of the Crown and of the Royal-Vaisseaux. The other, consisting of the light cavalry of Normandy and the infantry of Colonel-General, the leading French regiment, were lodged at the citadel, that imposing fortress which is Vauban’s masterpiece. Certain signs of insubordination had crept into the two former regiments; the revolutionary spirit was working actively in the men, and was favoured by the permanent contact with the inhabitants in which these two regiments lived. More remote from this influence, away off in the citadel, the “Colonel-Generals” cherished sentiments of wholehearted devotion to the King; moreover, they had over them a body of officers whose unadulterated royalism was to display itself in the events which we shall now endeavour to set forth. As matters were, the least thing would let loose these warring elements in the garrison upon one another. And what finally did it? A mere nothing, a scuffle that broke out on the evening of April 8, between the chasseurs and the grenadiers—some say a duel. At any rate, two soldiers were killed on the spot.... Instantly cavalry and infantry take sides for their respective comrades. During the night a general attack is talked of, on both sides. The officers get wind of it; but, unluckily, two of the colonels are on leave. The Marquis de Livarot, commandant of the province, tries to restore peace by holding a meeting of delegates from each corps; he believes he has succeeded, but scarcely has he left them when the fusillade breaks out again in every direction.
The “Colonel-Generals” had remained neutral until then; discipline, so carefully maintained by the commanding officers, had prevailed with the men. But when, in the evening, they saw the chasseurs of
Normandy falling back on the citadel for refuge, these their comrades of the infantry opened the gates to them, brought them in and joined cause with them, refusing any longer to listen to their officers, who still strove for peace. They carried things, indeed, even further than that. M. de Livarot and M. de Montrosier—that last lieutenant of the King—on coming out of the gate which led into the square, saw that they were surrounded by a group of mutineers, whose attitude was menacing. Despite the efforts of the few officers who were present, these two were dragged into a casemate, where their situation was simply that of prisoners.
During this time the most sinister rumours were circulating in the town, kept alive by the infantry of the Crown and the RoyalVaisseaux regiments. People expected nothing less than to see the cannons of the citadel open their throats and vomit down grape-shot on the populace. Shortly, on the walls of the houses and in the cafés, the uneasy citizens might read a strange proclamation, at the authorship of which all the world could guess. It opened with this apostrophe:—
“L , C ,
,
and thrice: Let us beware. We are deceived, we are betrayed, we are sold!... But we are not yet ruined; we have our weapons! The infernal Fitz-James[3] is gone with all his crew ... they have contented themselves with keeping back a useless lot.
“Livaro, the infamous Livaro, is said to be in our citadel; Montrosier, the atrocious author of all our ills, sleeps peacefully.
“The soldiers, whom they have tried to corrupt, offer these men to us.... What are we waiting for? Why do we not show all France that we are Citizens, that we are Patriots? Is it for the orders of our Commandant that we look? But has not the aristocrat of Orgères already shown us how unworthy he is of the place which we have blindly entrusted to him?... He
commands us only that he may lead us into the abyss. Seconded by his sycophant, Carette, and by the traitors whom our cowardice leaves in command over us; leagued with the heads of all the aristocratic intrigues, he now seeks to alienate from us our brave comrades of the Crown, and of Royal-des-Vaisseaux. Shall we let them go? No; ... but we will march with them.... We will go and seize Livarot, Montrosier, and deliver them up, bound hand and foot, to the utmost severity of the august National Assembly!
“Why are not our conscript Fathers convoked? Is the General Council of the Commune a mere phantom? Is the blood of our citizens less precious than vile pecuniary interests? Would not our secret enemies flinch before the enlightenment and the patriotism of our Notables? Ah! Citizens! Let us beware, and once more let us beware!”
At an extraordinary meeting at the Maison de Ville, the Municipality had convoked the General Council; and, in the interval they received a deputation from the troops of the citadel, assuring the inhabitants of Lille of their good intentions: “The regiments of the Colonel-General, and of the Chasseurs de Normandie” (said the envoys) “protest to the townsfolk that it has never entered into their heads to cause the least alarm to the citizens, of whom until now they have known nothing that was not admirable;” and they also announced that two delegates had been sent to Paris, on a mission to the National Assembly and to the King.
The whole night went by, and no solution had been found. Towards four o’clock the two regiments which had stayed in town were about to leave it on the persuasion of the town councillors; but the City Guard would not let them go, and thus, on the morning of April 10, the same difficulties had to be faced anew But this situation could not continue. Messengers are despatched to Paris, and with them are sent denunciators of the “infamous” Livarot, whose conduct is considered suspicious; and for eight days he is kept under surveillance at the citadel, in defiance of the Royal authority with which he is invested.
Meanwhile, the officer delegated by the “Colonel-Generals” was making his way to Paris. Despite the importance of the mission, it was a young lieutenant who had been chosen for it; but the coolness he had shown all through the episode, and his determined and energetic attitude, had designated him at once as the man to be selected. Louis de Frotté was born at Alençon on August 5, 1766.[4] Of noble lineage (his family had been established in Normandy since the fifteenth century), he had inherited the sentiments of duty and fidelity to his King and of devotion to that King’s cause. Left motherless at the age of six,[5] educated first at Caen, then at Versailles, in the school of Gorsas,[6] he had entered as supernumerary sub-lieutenant, in 1781, the regiment of “ColonelGeneral,” then garrisoned at Lille. The young officer attracted every one by his generous, liberal, and affectionate character, and by his strong sense of comradeship. It was in the regiment that he contracted those solid friendships which were afterwards so beneficial to him, such, for instance, as that of the Prince de la Tremoïlle, and of a Norman gentleman named Vallière.
A short stay at Besançon had broken up the long months in garrison at Lille; then he had returned to that town, where the disturbances of which we are speaking had come to diversify the somewhat monotonous way of existence which is inseparable from garrison life.
Filled with hope for the result of his mission, Frotté rode swiftly to Paris. The prospect of seeing the King, of narrating to him, as well as to the War Minister, Le Tour du Pin, the recent occurrences at Lille, of assuring him of the fidelity of the regiment, of obtaining some tolerably satisfactory solution of the critical situation—all this was spurring on our cavalier. And the thought of soon getting back to Lille, his mission crowned with success, of reappearing before certain eyes to which he was not insensible—everything combined to make him forget the length of the journey.
His stay at Paris was a short one. The future chief of the chouans of Normandy realized one of his greatest wishes in being admitted to an audience with the King; but the position of the Royal Family in the
midst of the prevailing effervescence of feeling, and the atmosphere of hostility which surrounded them, filled his heart with foreboding thoughts. Burning with devotion, powerless to make valid offers to the King, Frotté—who had suggested the bringing together at Lille of a nucleus of reliable troops, absolutely to be trusted—regained the garrison at the end of a few days, for it had been made clear to him that Louis XVI. did not wish to share in his youthful ardour and its projects. He had, however, succeeded thoroughly in the official part of his task. When confronted with a deputation from the hostile regiments of the Crown and of the Royal-Vaisseaux, who came in their turn to plead their cause, the representative of the ColonelGenerals had been able to cope with them in defence of his own interests; he came back, bringing with him an order for the alteration of the whole garrison. The Colonel-Generals were transferred to Dunkirk, the three others were sent out of the province. As to the unfortunate Marquis de Livarot, who was still a prisoner at the citadel, a mandate from the Minister summoned him to Paris, there to answer for his conduct. Needless to say, he cleared himself of every accusation, and was entirely rehabilitated.
Frotté did not spend in idleness the few days which preceded the departure of his regiment. Besides the ordinary arrangements—the giving up of his place of abode, the packing of his affairs, the paying of his debts; besides the friends to whom he had to bid farewell; in short, besides the thousand ties that are contracted during a stay of nine years in a town which is not among the smallest in the kingdom, there was, in the Rue Princesse, at a few minutes’ walk from the citadel, a one-storeyed house of unimposing exterior, whose door had often opened to receive the young officer. The prospect of not returning there for a long time filled his heart with distress and regret. For some months this house had been inhabited by a foreigner, an English lady, who had come to Lille with a reputation for grace and beauty which had proved to be not unmerited. At that time there was already in Lille quite a colony of English people, who were attracted there either by the proximity of their own country and the closeness of Paris, or by the commercial prosperity of the place and its numerous industries. In the census returns of the town at the beginning of the Revolution, and also in the taxation assessments,
we have come across many names of evident British origin. But the remarkable thing about the new-comers at the Rue Princesse, was that they had not arrived from England, but from Versailles. They were very soon received by the best society of Lille, and questions began to circulate about them, every one trying to penetrate a certain mystery which hung about their past life.
Let us, in our turn, attempt to lift the veil, and to find out something about the English lady who is to be the heroine of this work.
Charlotte Walpole, who was born probably about 1758,[7] bore a name that in the United Kingdom is illustrious among the illustrious. Was she a direct descendant of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Oxford, the celebrated statesman who administered English politics for some years under George I.? It is difficult to ascertain.
The youngest of three daughters,[8] Charlotte probably passed all her youth in the county of Norfolk, the cradle of her family, under that gloomy sky, in that ever-moist climate, in the midst of those emerald green pastures which make that part of England one of the great agricultural districts. The tranquil, melancholy charm of the scenery there, the immense flocks of sheep and goats browsing in the pastures, the wide horizon, unlimited except by the heavy clouds which hang eternally over the land—all this fastened upon the imagination of the girl, naturally of a very enthusiastic temperament, and developed in her that indefinable charm which struck all who knew her. Her large eyes, enhanced by very marked eyebrows, had an infinitely sweet expression. The only existing portrait of her depicts her with her hair dressed in the fashion of the time—her dark curls lightly tied with a slender ribbon, and falling back, carelessly, on her forehead. She had a most original mind, a face which changed and lit up with every passing mood, and an expression all her own, which made her, as it were, a unique personality. All this is enough explanation of why, at nineteen, Charlotte Walpole went to London, with the idea of making use of her talents on the stage.
The capital of England could then boast of only three theatres, of which the most frequented, Drury Lane, which ranked as Theatre Royal, is still in existence, and preserves intact its ancient reputation.
It was there that, on October 2, 1777, at the opening of the theatrical season, Miss Walpole made her first appearance in a piece called Love in a Village,[9] a comedy probably in the same genre as those of O’Keefe, and then very much to the public taste, which was growing weary of the brutal and licentious farces of the preceding centuries. Five days later Miss Walpole reappeared in The Quaker, and the week after she was seen in the role of “Jessica” in The Merchant of Venice, one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces. After having played, in the spring of 1778, in The Waterman, her success seemed assured; on May 2, Love in a Village was given again for her benefit, and she then filled to perfection the part of “Rosetta”; the season terminated ten days later with a representation of The Beggars’ Opera, by John Gay. There can be no doubt that the young actress had found her vocation, and that, moreover, with the consent of her family. But, as a matter of fact, there did not then prevail in England the sort of disfavour that so often attaches to a theatrical career in a certain set of society. Miss Walpole’s experience is a proof of this. During the summer, which she most probably spent in the country, she sought to cultivate her talents, and so well did she succeed that in the season, which reopened on September 15, 1778, she was seen again in London, eager to gather fresh laurels. This time she appeared in costume, in a sort of operetta entitled The Camp, which had a tremendous success all that winter. The piece, an imitation of Sheridan by Tickell, represented the arsenal and the camp at Coxheath, and Miss Walpole, as “Nancy,” took the part of a young soldier, and filled it most admirably, a contemporary author informs us.[10] We have found an engraving which represents her in this costume, doubtless a souvenir of the plaudits which she then received. In the month of April, 1779, she appears again in other pieces by Farquhar. After this, the bills for us have nothing to say; Miss Walpole’s name is not to be found in them.
W H Bunbury Delinᵗ. Watson & Dickinson Excudᵗ. C W , “T C .”
(After an engraving in the British Museum.)
[To face page 12.
To what must one attribute this sudden silence, this disappearance from the stage, just when so fair a future seemed opening before the actress? To a determination brought about by her very success itself and by the charm she exercised. Several times during the winter a young man had been seen at Drury Lane, who occupied a front stall and watched very keenly the acting of the graceful young recruit of Coxheath; so that there was no very great astonishment expressed when, on June 18, 1779, The Gentleman’s Magazine, in its society column, announced the marriage of Sir Edward Atkyns with Miss Charlotte Walpole, of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.[11] “The pretty Miss Atkyns”—that was henceforth to be her appellation in London, and all over Norfolk!
If the Walpoles could boast of an illustrious descent, the Atkyns’ in this respect were in no wise inferior to them. In this family, where the Christian names are handed down from generation to generation, that of Edward is, as it were, immutable! Illustrious personages are by no means wanting. An Atkyns had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in the seventeenth century; his son had built a splendid manor-house, Ketteringham, in the same county of Norfolk; at his death he left it to his grand-nephew, who, in his turn, bequeathed it to the fortunate husband of Miss Walpole.
The young couple took up their abode in this antique mansion of Ketteringham Hall, the name of which will often recur in this narrative. They appear to have lived peacefully there for some years, coming only for a few weeks in mid-winter to London. “Happy is the nation that has no history,” says the proverb; and it is equally true that happy folk have none. So we will certainly not, in the absence of any material, create one for these young people.
Nevertheless, it is well to mention the account given of them by a friend of our heroine, the Countess MacNamara, who seems to have been very well acquainted with the different particulars of her life. She tells us that the young couple, who, if we are to believe her, had not many friends in England, decided to go to the Continent, and live at Versailles.[12] (The explanation does not seem a very plausible one.) There the charm of the young wife, her pretty voice, the
receptions which she soon began to give, and to which, thanks to her husband’s wealth, she was able to lend so much brilliancy, opened to her quickly the doors of all the society connected with the Court. In the Queen’s set, the beautiful Duchess de Polignac, in particular, took a great fancy to this graceful foreigner; and was desirous, in her turn, to make her known to her august friend. Thus it came about that Lady Atkyns was introduced into the circle of MarieAntoinette’s intimates. Even more completely than the others, the new-comer fell under the Queen’s spell. A current of ardent sympathy established itself between the two women. They were united by a deep and intimate mutual comprehension and sympathy. For any one who knew Lady Atkyns, it was certain that these first impressions would not fade, but that they would prove to be, on the contrary, the first-fruits of an unalterable friendship. These are the only materials one has for the details of that sojourn at Versailles. When exactly did the Atkynses resolve upon this move? Their only child, a son, must have been born before it took place. What were their plans in coming to the Court? All these are insoluble problems.
They were probably at Versailles when the first revolutionary troubles broke out. They were present, perhaps, at the opening of the States General, that great national function; and they were among those who shuddered at the taking of the Bastille. When the October days brought back the Royal family in a mournful procession to Paris, the young couple were already gone—already too far away to enter into the anxieties and sufferings of those whom they loved.
A brief mention, a few words found after patient research, in dusty registers, tell us enough to make us certain of their fate. This is one of the joys of the explorer in this sort—to find buried under the waste of years of accumulated official papers, a feeble light, a tiny, isolated indication, which opens, none the less, an infinite horizon before him.
In the autumn of the year 1789, an Englishwoman, named by the officials charged with the collection of a special poll-tax, Milady Charlotte, arrived at Lille with one servant.[13]
In December, she installed herself in the parish of St. André, in a house in the Rue Princesse, then numbered 337, which belonged to a gentleman named De Drurez. Of her husband there is no mention, nor is her surname given. Probably she had stayed some time at an inn, before settling down in Rue Princesse; but what is to be concluded from so vague an appellation as “Milady Charlotte”? Why did she conceal half her name? Nevertheless, at Lille there is some information to be had about her. We know that she was pensioned upon the Royal Treasury, since she is described as a French pensioner
In the following year she increases her establishment, keeping one more servant; her poll-tax, which had been 14 louis, now rises to 16. We may add here that, in order to satisfy our curiosity, we have examined—but in vain—the lists of the pensioners from the Royal Treasury at that period; there is no mention anywhere either of Milady Charlotte or of Lady Atkyns—not even in those which relate to the Queen’s household.[14]
By what right did she enjoy this pension? By the same, probably, as so many of those favoured folk whose names fill the famous redbooks—the books whose publication was to let loose the fury of the half of France upon the Court and the nobility, because they showed so plainly what treasures had been swallowed up in that abyss.
As we have said, the documents say nothing of the presence of Edward Atkyns at Lille—nothing, that is, with one exception, which, delicate as it is, cannot be passed over in silence. Had disunion already crept into the household? Had the pretty girl from Drury Lane found out too late that he to whom she had given her heart and her life was no longer entirely worthy of her gifts? Perhaps. At any rate, on March 20, 1791, the curate of the parish of St. Catherine at Lille baptized a male child, son “of Geneviève Leglen, native of Lille,” whose father declared himself to be Edward Atkyns.[15] Henceforth this last individual disappears completely from the scene in which we are interested; we shall merely learn that in 1794 Charlotte Atkyns was left a widow.
This somewhat lengthy digression was necessary in order to portray the lady whom Frotté was to designate as “That heroic and perfect being,” and who was to take such a hold upon his life. How did they become acquainted? Probably very quickly, in one of the numerous drawing-rooms where Lille society congregated, at balls, at the theatre, in the concert-hall. The white tunic, with red facings, of the “Colonel-Generals” was eagerly welcomed everywhere. As one of his friends wrote to Frotté: “All the decent people in the town will be delighted to see the uniform, if you wear it there!” And one can imagine the long talks that the young officer had with his fair friend in that winter of ’89—talks that circled always around one precious topic. Already full of Royalist feeling, Frotté grew enthusiastic for the Queen’s cause, as he listened to the stories about Versailles, to the reminiscences of her kindness, her charm, her affectionate ways—of the thousand characteristics, so faithfully recounted by the friend who had come under her influence.[16]
One can divine all the advice, all the prudent counsels which were impressed upon our young lieutenant on his departure for Paris. Everything combined to make him eager to offer his services to the King and his belongings. We have seen that his efforts were unsuccessful; but the journey had not been entirely fruitless, since it had enabled him to bring back to his friend some news of the woman she so loved.
At the end of April the good folk of Lille were to bid farewell to the regiments which had caused them so much anxiety. While the Colonel-Generals were leaving the town by the Dunkirk Gate, the townspeople were watching the long columns of the Normandy chasseurs, the grenadiers of the Crown, and the Royal-Vaisseaux disappearing in different directions. What had been a partial failure in Lille was to break out again three months later, in another part of the kingdom, for the affray there was but the prelude to the revolt of the troops of Chateauvieux, at Nancy, and to many other risings. The army, in fact, was every day becoming more and more infected by the spirit of revolution, which crept in somehow, despite all discipline
and all respect for the commanding officers. And the army was no untilled field; it was well prepared for the seed of the Revolution, which lost no time in taking root there.
This explains the discouragement which nearly all the officers felt. They were gentlemen of unflinching Royalist sympathies, but they perceived the fruitlessness of their efforts to re-establish discipline and to preserve their authority. Frotté was especially a prey to this feeling. We shall see that during his time at Dunkirk he found it impossible to conquer the hopeless lassitude that was growing on him. And yet Dunkirk is not far from Lille, and he knows that he has left behind him there a friend who will console and guide him. But his restless, questioning turn of mind makes it difficult for him to reconcile himself to accomplished facts. He can feel no sympathy for this Revolution, which now strides over France as with sevenleagued boots; he has, indeed, an instinctive repulsion for it. Frotté is an indefatigable scribbler, and in the long idle hours of his soldier-life he confides to paper all his fears and discouragements, while keeping up, at the same time, a regular correspondence, especially with his friends Vallière and Lamberville. It is a curious fact, already commented on by his biographer, M. de la Sicotière, that this intrepid and active officer, this flower of partisans, who spent three-fourths of his time in warfare, was yet the most prolific of writers and editors.
At Dunkirk he encountered among the officers of the regiment Viennois, which shared with his own the garrison of the place, a very favourable disposition towards his plans. His Royalist zeal, fostered by his friendships, was to find an outlet. Already the National Assembly, eager to secure the army on its side, had issued a decree obliging the officers to take the oath not only to the King, but to the nation, and to whatever Constitution might be given to France. Nothing would induce our young gentleman to take such an oath as that. He never hesitated for a moment, and he succeeded in influencing several of his brother officers to think as he did. It was thus that he announced his decision to his father:—
“You already know, my dear father, that an oath is now exacted from us officers which disgusts every honourable and decent feeling that I have. I could not take it. I know you too
well, father, not to be certain that you would have advised me to do just what I have done. And of course I did not depend only on my own poor judgment; I consulted most of my brother officers, and amongst those whom I esteem and love, I have not found one who thinks differently from myself. Our dear chief, too, M. de Théon, has been just the good fellow we always thought him.”[17]
His friend Vallière, on hearing of his conduct and his intentions, wrote to him in enthusiastic admiration.
“I am truly delighted to hear” (he wrote some days before his arrival at Dunkirk) “that the regiment Viennois is almost of the same way of thinking as our own, so that we are sure to get on well with them. Then there are still some decent Frenchmen, and some subjects who are faithful to their one and lawful master! Alas! there are not many of them, and one can only groan when one thinks how many old and hitherto courageous legions ... have stained irretrievably their ancient glory by this betrayal of their sovereign. Well, my dear fellow, we must hope that you will have some peace now to make up for all that you have been going through. Unfortunately, the immediate future does not seem likely to make us forget the past, or to promise us much happiness. If the scoundrels who are persecuting us, and ruining all the best things in Europe, take it into their heads to disband the Army (as one hears that they may), be sure to come here for refuge. Everything is still quiet here.... If their fury still pursues us, we will leave a country that has become hateful to us, and go to some foreign shore, where there will perhaps be found some kind folk to pity us and give us a home in their midst.”[18]
The first hint at emigration! Frotté was already thinking of it; often he had envisaged the idea, but, before giving up all hope, he wanted to make one last effort.
The proximity of Lille enabled him to keep up unbroken relations, during the summer and winter of 1790, with the officers of the garrison he had just left. A plot had even been roughly sketched out
with Lady Atkyns’ assistance; but a thousand obstacles retarded from day to day any attempt at carrying it out, and once more our poor young soldier was totally discouraged. Despairing of success, disgusted with everything, he began to meditate escape from an existence which yielded him nothing but vexations, and, little by little, he ceased to brood seriously over the thought of suicide. He spoke of it openly and at length to his friend Lamberville, in a strange composition which he called My profession of faith, and which has been almost miraculously preserved for us.[19] This confession is dated February 20, 1791. We should have given it in its entirety if it were not so long.[20] After a quasi-philosophical preamble—Frotté was addicted to that kind of thing—he described to his friend the miserable state of mind that he was in, with all his troubles and his griefs. In his opinion, a man who had fallen to such depths of illfortune could do but one thing, and that was, to give back to God the life which he had received from Him.
“My ideas about suicide are not” (he added) “the outcome of reading nor of example; they are the result of much reflection. I have long since familiarized myself with the idea of death; it no longer seems to me a sad thing, but rather a certain refuge from the troubles of life.... When I consider my own situation, and that of my country; when I think of what I have been, what I am, and what I may become, I can find no reason for valuing my own life. Moreover, I live in an age of crime, and it is my native land that is most subjected to its sway.”
And Frotté went on to describe his past life to his friend, telling him of the way he had behaved hitherto, of the principles that had guided him, the hopes he had cherished in the brighter opening days of life; then the disappointments and the discomfitures that had overwhelmed him. The events he had lived through filled his mind with bitterness.
“I was born to be a good son and a good friend, a tender lover, a good soldier, a loyal subject—in a word, a decent fellow. But it breaks my heart to see how my compatriots have
altered from kindly human beings to crazy ruffians, and have so accustomed themselves to slaughter, incendiarism, murder, and robbery, that they can never again be what they used to be. They have trampled every virtue under foot; they torture the hearts that still love them.... And my own profession, soldiering, is dishonoured; there is no glory about it now; my country is in a state of anarchy which appals me.”
Very evident in these pages, written in a delicate cramped handwriting, is the continual bent towards self-analysis, towards minute details of feeling, towards a lofty and remote attitude, so markedly characteristic of Frotté’s prose.
Many pages of the thick, ribbed paper, fastened together with a sky-blue ribbon, are filled with the same kind of reflections; then he suddenly breaks off altogether. Had he carried out his intention? Was that why he ceased to write? Not at all; for two months later, on April 10, there is a further confession, and the young soldier-philosopher begins by admitting that he has changed his mind; he defends himself on that point, and says that reflection has made him resolve to give up such gloomy views for himself. First of all, the fear of causing irreparable grief to his father had made him pause (and yet their relations do not seem to have been so affectionate as of yore); [21] and then the desire to settle certain debts, considerable enough, that he would leave behind him.
“In fact,” (he says) “since fresh troubles are overwhelming me, I have decided not to choose this moment for suicide. I want to be quite calm, on the day that I set out on the Great Journey.... The month of August saw my birth; it shall see my death.... But I don’t want to play for effect. I try my best to seem just the same and to let no one guess what I am thinking of.... Then there’s another reason for my going on with life. Since I was born a nobleman of France, I want to do my duty as one.... My sword may still be of some use to my King and to my friends; and since I must die, I want my death to benefit my family and my country.... I shall fasten up this confession, until the moment comes for me to die. If I have the good luck to fight, and die in the cause of honour, this, my
dear Lamberville, will console you a little, for it will prove to you that death was a comfort to me. If disorder and dissolution are still reigning in France when August comes, if there has been no attempt to restore order—then I shall lose all hope, and all the reasons that I give you here will acquire full force. I shall not be able to hesitate. I shall then take up my pen again to add my last wishes, and my last farewell to my tenderest and dearest friend.”
In spite of the melancholy tone of these pages, their author had finally taken the advice which came to him from all directions, from people who loved him and were in his confidence, and who deeply grieved to hear of such a state of mind. There was none more loyal than that young Vallière of whom we have already spoken. At that time he was on leave in the Caux district. Frotté and he were very intimate, and Vallière knew every step that was made towards the carrying out of the plot which had been arranged simultaneously at Lille and at Dunkirk.
“I am very sorry,” he wrote to his friend on November 13, 1790, “that the things you had to tell me could only be entrusted to me verbally. However, in the absence of further knowledge, there was nothing for me to do but simply come here,[22] where in any case I had business, and where I am now waiting quietly for the carrying out of the promises you made me, being, as you know, fully prepared. But, my dear fellow, I see with amazement that nothing as yet is happening to verify your forecast. Can you possibly have been prematurely sanguine, or has the plan miscarried? Perhaps it is merely a question of delay—Well! That is all right, and I hope that’s what it is.”[23]
Two months later, Vallière, who had doubtless gone to Paris to make inquiries, gave the following account of his journey:—
“I came back on the 3rd instant; and I shall have no difficulty in telling you of all my doings in Paris, for I did nothing in the least out-of-the-way. I lived there like a good quiet citizen, who confines himself to groaning (since he can
do nothing better) over all the afflicting things he sees. I went from time to time to see our ‘August Ones,’ and they always put me in a furious temper.”
Our “August Ones,” as Vallière mockingly called them, were the members of the Constituent Assembly, and they were busied with the elaboration of that gigantic piece of work, the Constitution, which was to substitute the new order for the old traditions of France. Little by little the edifice was growing, built upon the ruins of the past. The sight of it filled with vexation and fury those who, like Frotté, deplored the fallen Royalty, the lost privileges, the dispossessed nobility, of the old order. For the rest, our chevalier, during his stay at Dunkirk, had frequent news about his fair friend at Lille. One day it would be a brother officer who would write, “I played cards yesterday with your fair lady, who looked as pretty as an angel, if angels ever are so pretty as were told they are. She is going to have her portrait painted in oils by my favourite artist. I dare say she’ll manage somehow to get a copy done in miniature for her Chevalier!”[24]
Or another time he would be told to come to a concert at which a place had been taken for him.... In a word, the time went on; and, kicking against the pricks, our young soldier awaited the moment when he might bring his plans to realization.
From month to month the spirit of insubordination which had crept into the regiment with the events at Lille was gaining ground, and showing itself more and more overtly. The Garde Nationale recently formed at Dunkirk showed signs of it. At the head of this was an enterprising officer, of the “new order,” named Emmery, who sought persistently to win the troops of the garrison over to his own way of thinking. But he found his match in the colonel of the regiment, the Chevalier de Théon, a staunch Royalist, who had no intention of pandering with the enemy. In a small place like Dunkirk, shut up between its ramparts—the barracks were in the middle of the town— it was physically impossible to prevent the soldiers from coming in contact with the townsfolk. M. de Théon and his officers (the majority of whom were on his side) had seen that very clearly; and suddenly, in the month of June, they resolved to try a bold stroke. Dunkirk was only five leagues from the Austrian frontier, which was some hours’
distance from Brussels, where already the forces of resistance of the anti-revolutionary party were concentrating. They resolved on winning Belgium to their cause, on gaining over the troops, and on offering their services to the Prince’s Army, which was forming beyond the frontier.
Before executing this scheme, Louis de Frotté is secretly sent to Brussels. He there sees the Marquis de la Queville, formerly a member of the Constitutional Assembly, and deputy of Riom, who has become agent for the Princes; but little attention is paid to Frotté’s proposals, and no promises of any kind are made. Frotté returns somewhat discouraged to Dunkirk.
Suddenly, like a clap of thunder, resounds the news which is to throw the kingdom into confusion for three days. During the night of June 20-21 the Royal Family have escaped from the Tuileries, despite Lafayette’s guards, and the berlin which holds them is driving rapidly towards the frontier. Directly the exploit is known messengers set off in all directions, despatched by the National Assembly; they take chiefly the northerly roads, where everything points to the probable finding of the fugitives. The authorities at Dunkirk, in their turn, receive despatches from Paris, and take extra precautions.
This was quite enough to let loose the thunderstorm that was gathering in the garrison.
On June 23, at 11 a.m., the grenadiers of the Colonel-General, who had been skilfully worked upon by some of the agitators, signed the following protestation, and refused to follow their officers. They actually succeeded in raising the whole garrison.
“When the Commonwealth is in danger” (so one may read in their manifest), “when the enemies of our blessed revolution raise an audacious resistance, when a cherished King abandons his people and flies to his enemies’ side—the duty of all true Frenchmen is to unite, to join forces! There should be but one cry—Liberty! Resolute to conquer, we should confront our enemies with a body of men who are ready to dare all at the lightest sign, and to wash off with the blood of traitors the insult done to a free people!”[25]
