Chapter Summary 

Project Lessons from the Great Escape (Stalag Luft III) 

Most of us have seen the movie The Great Escape (Metro Goldwyn MayerTM, 1963).  This film has captivated audiences with its humour and action, but it has also falsely coloured our view of the actual event of 1944.   No motorbikes were used in the escape, and the  most exotic transportation the escapees could hope for was a train ride.

So how does this relate to the field of project management today?   Many projects today are initiated with clear objectives, executive sponsorship, and healthy budgets, but they still fail.  Other projects have no budgets and numerous obstacles in their way, and yet they succeed.  This is the story of one of the perceived successes.

Chapter 1: The Story Begins

This chapter looks at why projects fail to start and why the fear of failure needs to be overcome.  It gives the background to the journey of the team members (prisoners) who found themselves in captivity and discusses their states of mind. 

How many times have you been faced with a project that is based on a good idea but has no official sanction?   It lacks finances, resources, and sponsors, and everything is stacked against it.  But you represent a group with an understanding of the problems and a vision to advance in the project, and you know that fundamentally this is the right thing to do.  How do you get this project off the ground and turn it into a reality?  Well, first you need to understand the difference between project success and project failure.  Once you have done this, you can then take the first step in your project.

Chapter 2: Background and Environmental Situation

This chapter looks at the background and conditions in which the project originated and the impact of a hostile environment.  It also discusses the players in the project, their backgrounds, and their relationships to each other.

Stalag Luft III was built to hold some of the finest escape artists in the Allied Air Forces, POWs with an escape record.  It was a purposely bleak, inhospitable POW camp built inside the northern edge of a sandy pine forest that stretched for more than twenty miles.  Located near Sagan in eastern Germany (now Poland), it was 105 miles (160 kilometers) from Berlin, 80 miles (130 kilometers) from Dresden, over 400 miles (600 kilometers) from Switzerland, and nearly 200 miles (300 kilometers) from the Baltic ports that led to neutral Sweden (see Figure 2.1).  This location made any escape very arduous because of the distance that had to be covered.

Chapter 3: Gathering the Requirements

This chapter looks at gathering the requirements and understanding the complexities and interdependencies of the problems faced by the project.  In any project, understanding the problems confronting it is an essential first step to creating a solution.

There were many problems facing the escape project, and their captors had deliberately set these up.  Typically, the resolution of one problem only uncovered a further problem that was even more complex and more difficult.

Chapter 4: Project Initiation

In today’s world, projects follow various life cycles.  In this story of escape, the closest life cycle is listed with four phases:

1.             Initiation

2.             Planning and Design

3.             Construction

4.             Implementation and Breakout

This chapter reviews how the project was initiated and the project team was brought together to plan the project.  This requires the careful selection of team members to form a core team.

In today’s projects, each project phase is completed by the delivery of one or more deliverables.  The PMBOK™ advocates not only phases and deliverables but also knowledge areas that need to be fulfilled through the course of the project

Chapter 5: Planning and Design  

This chapter looks at how the project team starts to plan the project and work through the high-level design of the solution.  This requires viewing the project through nine knowledge areas which continues through the chapter. Bushell was involved in every detail of the project planning.  Although no physical plan was ever produced, t his is what the plan might have looked like based on the activities that took place:

§  Initiation

–  Idea, Approach, Proposal, ROI

–  Checkpoint 1: Escape Committee--Assess Risk, Designate Resources

§  Planning and Design

–  High-Level Plan, Blueprint

–Checkpoint 2: Escape Committee--Assess Risk, Apply Resources

§  Construction

–  Preparation of Tunnel

–  Engineering of Tunnel

–  Construction and Testing

–  Preparation for Escape

–  Checkpoint 3: Escape Committee--Assess Risk to Determine Likelihood of Success

–  Implementation and Breakout

–  Implement Escape

–  Checkpoint 4: Escape Committee--Assess Risk to Determine Likelihood of Success

–  Collect Metrics and Determine Success

–  Consider Rerun (Reuse)

Chapter 6: Constructing Solutions to Problems  

This chapter looks at the heart of the project, the construction phase, and this is where the construction begins.  This phase created the solutions to the immediate problems that the escape committee faced.   For example, one of the first steps to get going was to make the entrances to the tunnels, and these became the cleverly concealed trap doors that were dug soon after.

Chapter 7: Implementation and Breakout  

This chapter looks at the implementation of the project: the escape through the tunnel and the breakout from the camp.

Typically, a project will revisit this knowledge area (Scope Management) and review major deliverables, the work breakdown structure (WBS), and the organization's cost-benefit analysis.

The Scope Planning phase actively plans the work for future deliverables, but the scope needs to be achievable with resources at hand.  Otherwise, the project could get into trouble.  When the escape committee started to plan the escape, they were instigating a project of a monumental scale, a one-time escape.  In this situation, the tunnel was going to be used only once, so there were no future deliverables.

Chapter 8: Closing: A Project Success or Failure?

This chapter reviews the project aftermath, considers whether the project was a success or failure, and completes a postmortem.  It revisits the factors in Chapter 1: fear of failure that prevents projects from getting off the ground, measures to reduce risk, and ways to make projects more palatable.

In the aftermath a huge numbers of troops and civilians were engaged in the search and roundup of escapees, so in this respect alone the escape had succeeded in hindering the German war effort.

Within days, most of the escapees were recaptured.  Around seventy-six of the two hundred and twenty made it out of the camp, but seventy-three were recaptured.  During the blackout, escapers could not find the railway station, and as a result they missed their trains.  Much praise is due to the hardarsers who knew that their chances in winter were thin.  Everyone was rounded up in two weeks except three escapers who made it to a neutral country and achieved the elusive "home run."  These were two Norwegians who reached neutral Sweden and a Dutchman who reached Gibraltar via France and Spain (in six weeks).

The recaptured escapers were taken to the Gestapo on Himmler's orders.  This was unusual, as recaptured POWs were normally handed over to the civilian police to be dealt with accordingly.  The POWs were then interrogated and moved between prisons.

Roger Bushell never made it to the freedom of neutral land, even though he had a very good escape plan and was heading to Czechoslovakia to get out through the Balkans.  He almost made it, but at the border a minor discrepancy on one of his papers gave him away.

Chapter 9: Evaluating the PMBoKTM Knowledge Areas

How Did the Project Shape Up to the PMBOKTM Knowledge Areas? Although the nine PMBOKTM knowledge areas were not recognised in 1944, it is interesting how well the project mapped to these principles and how their respective issues were addressed.  This chapter summarizes these knowledge areas and assesses how well they were applied through a score (High/Medium/Low).