A Project Management Historical Timeline

While reviewing my latest copy of Project Manager Today – a UK-based PM magazine – I was reading their article entitled “A Profession is Born” which looks back on the 20-year history of the publication. Included in the article is a timeline of some key points in project management history – though with a very UK twist to it.

I decided to put together a more all-inclusive timeline by grabbing some info from Wikipedia and whatever other sources I could find.  The resulting timeline follows – I hope you find it as interesting as I did. If you have anything that should be added or revised – please let me know…I’m always interested in accuracy and completeness.

Project Management Timeline

1910s

• 1910 – The Gantt Chart developed by Henry Laurence Gantt (1861–1919)

1950s

• 1954 – Bernard Shriever (US Air Force) coins the term Project Management
• 1956 - The Critical path method (CPM) invented by Du Pont employees
• 1956 – The American Association of Cost Engineers (now AACE International) formed
• 1958 – The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) method invented and used on the Polaris project

1960s

• 1962 – DoD/NASA publish a description of the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
• 1967 – The International Project Management Association (IPMA) founded in Europe
• 1969 – Project Management Institute (PMI) launched to promote project management profession

1970s

• 1973 – International Computers Limited (ICL) offer PERT on a mainframe computer
• 1974 -PROMPT method launched (later known as PRINCE2)
• 1975 – PROMPTII methodology created by Simpact Systems Ltd (source: PRINCE2 manual)
• 1975 – The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Fred Brooks published
• 1979 – Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA – later known as Office of Government Commerce or OGC – UK) adopt PROMPT II

1980s

• 1980 – First ‘on screen’ bar chart on early PCs
• 1981 – UK Army adopts PROMPT method
• 1984 – The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt published
• 1986 – Scrum was named as a project management style in the article The New New Product Development Game by Takeuchi and Nonaka
• 1987 – First Project Management Body of Knowledge Guide (PMBoK) published as a white paper by PMI
• 1989 – PRINCE method derived from PROMPTII is published by the UK Government agency CCTA and becomes the UK standard for all government information projects

1990s

• 1996 PRINCE2 published by CCTA (now OGC) as a generic product management methodology for all UK government projects.
• 1996 – First published edition of the PMBoK appears
• 1997 – Critical Chain by Eliyahu M. Goldratt published

2000s

• 2000 PMBoK second edition published
• 2001 Agile Alliance formed to promote “lightweight” software development projects
• 2004 PMBoK third edition published
• 2006 Total Cost Management Framework release by AACE
• 2008 PMBoK fourth edition published

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