Project Lessons from the Great Escape
The Great Escape from the prison camp Stalag Luft III is widely regarded as one of the most audacious and daring escape attempts of the 20th century. But as an event in March 1944, set in dire circumstances, what actually happened? How was the escape planned and executed as a project? How did it get around numerous obstacles in a habitat designed to be escape proof? How was the project tracked? In today’s world business people are grappling with numerous obstacles in planning and executing projects in a climate of rapid changes. What can be learned from this event and put into practice today?
Learning Objectives:
- How the PMBOK Knowledge Areas came into play with the project planning and execution.
- What techniques were used to motivate the project team to participate throughout the whole project.
- How the project team’s work effort was maximized by carefully matching skill sets to project activities.
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Mark Kozak-Holland
HP Services, Consulting and Integration
Project Lessons from the Great Escape is from the “Lessons from History” series. As the author behind the series, Mark Kozak-Holland brings years of experience as a consultant who helps Fortune-500 companies formulate projects that leverage emerging technologies. Since 1985 he has been straddling the business and IT worlds making these projects happen. He is a certified business consultant, the author of several books, and a noted speaker. Mark has always been interested in tracing the evolution of technology and the 3 industrial revolutions of the last 300 years. Whilst recovering a failed Financial Services project he first used the Titanic analogy to explain to project executives why the project had failed. The project recovery was going to take 2 years and $8m cost versus the original $2m cost and 1 year duration.
As a historian, Kozak-Holland seeks out the wisdom of the past to help others avoid repeating mistakes and to capture time-proven techniques. His lectures on Lessons from History projects have been very popular at gatherings of project managers and CIOs.
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