Titanic Workshop

The Titanic story is one of recent histories most well known project failures.

They thought the Titanic was unsinkable. They were wrong!

Summary Description of Workshop

This workshop looks at the whole Titanic project, cradle to grave, and dispels the myth that the disaster could not have been avoided. In what seemed the blueprint for a perfect project, inept project management allowed major compromises to be made in every project stage - from design to construction, to testing, and right into implementation. The workshop makes a very strong case that the causes leading to the sinking of the Titantic are very similar to reasons IT projects fail. The shipping company White Star had a mission to meet competitive pressures by launching 3 new super liners to service TransAtlantic travel.  The fact that White Star developed a new business strategy and embraced an emerging technology underscores the similarities to today's challenge of rolling out new projects.  Coupled with the course of construction, the workshop illustrates how the building of the Titanic, in many ways, followed the best practices of project management without the existence of project management as a discipline.  In many ways the Titanic project team should have succeeded because of the attention to minimize risks by: 
 
 looking at the operational side as well as incorporating potential risks
 investing in a pilot model to analyze exposure to the possibility of loss
 employing safety features to reduce risk.
 
But decisions were made that compromised those risk reduction features in addition to strong business pressures to "go live" before completing the testing phase.  In the end, the belief that the Titanic was unsinkable contributed to its demise in much the same way as an IT project is marketed to its target user base and expectations are not met due to short changing the project process. The workshop steps through the construction of the Titanic, highlighting significant decisions made and interjecting the business influences that contributed to the fate of the project.
 

Designed under the Lessons-from-History series, this Best Practice in Project Management Workshop will breathe new life into project management learning. The workshop takes lessons from the historical project and enables you to recognize the parallels in your own organization and projects. You will undertake a range of practical exercises throughout the day enabling you to relate lessons back to your own projects and apply new learning to your own projects.

This fully interactive one day workshop incorporates principles from leading Project Management methodologies such as PMBOK and PRINCE2, but also demonstrates that successful Project Management does not need sophisticated tools.  Upon the successful completion of this workshop, you will be able to better utilize project management and identify warning signs that could take a project off track, and how to counter these.

Who Should Attend?

 Are you responsible for Managing Projects in your workplace?

 Do you contribute to project outcomes?

 Managers, Project Managers and members of teams responsible for contributing to project outcomes will all benefit from the insights gained from this unique workshop.