Project Management Blunders: Lessons from the Project That Built, Launched, and Sank Titanic

The sinking of the RMS Titanic ranks as one of the most memorable and significant events of the 20th century and for one hundred years has fascinated countless generations. The events of that fateful voyage have been told and retold over the years; however, few have examined the actual building of the ship and how decisions made during that process directly contributed to the disaster. This book examines the Titanic story from a project management perspective and conclusively shows how the decisions made during design, construction, and sea trials (testing) compromised the ship's integrity and left it vulnerable to disaster. Titanic's disaster has been put down to bad luck, an accident, and caused by the unforeseen forces of nature. The ship was sunk after glancing a blow with an iceberg. As a result, conventional wisdom is the situation was outside of the control of the captain and officers who were depicted as mere bystanders incapable of changing the course of events. The truth is very different. The seeds of disaster were sown as Titanic was designed, and there was a long chain of mistakes. This book puts forward a very different version of the disaster.