RMS Titanic was a passenger liner that struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, and sank on 15 April 1912. She struck the iceberg four days into the crossing, at 23:40 on 14 April 1912, and sank at 2:20 the following morning, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.
-Wikipedia

The Sinking of the Titanic on April 14/15, 1912 offers many valuable lessons for the Project Manager, from both a popular perspective and from a more serious academic perspective.

The Sinking of RMS Titanic – a Popular Perspective

Various authors have used the sinking of the Titanic to illustrate popular lessons, such as Icebergs are only 1/7th above water (hence the expression “tip of the iceberg“). Blog entry “Management Lessons from Titanic” on the Taming the Software Dragon blog lists 10 such lessons learned.

The Titanic story is well known to many people from the various movies that have been made over the past century. Wikipedia has a list of films featuring RMS Titanic, beginning in 1912 and including the 1997 film by James Cameron.

The 1997 film Titanic focused on the characters of Jack Dawson (Leondaro DiCaprio) and Rose DeWitt Bakater (Kate Winslet). The making of the movie was a massive project, with an estimated budget of $200 million. This included the building of a reconstruction of the Titanic at Playas de Rosarito, Baja California. This set, as well as the scale models and computer-generated imagery are shown in the Making of the Titanic, featured on YouTube.

Academic Studies of the Lessons Learned from RMS Titanic

If you’re willing to spend the time for a more in-depth study of the disaster, these links provide a deeper study of the Titanic disaster, from the perspectives of the design and construction of the ship, the design of the White Star ocean-crossing service, through her maiden voyage to the discovery of the wreck in 1985.

For an in-depth study of White Star and the design and construction design and construction decisions, Mark Kozak-Holland has written two books. These books are available on the Lessons From History website – Titanic Lessons for IT Projects (the first and second chapters are available for download), 160 pages and Avoiding Project Disasters, 312 pages.

Mark Kozak-Holland serialized much of the material on gantthead.com in a 16 part series IT Project Lessons from Titanic.

In “Project Management of the RMS Titanic and the Olympic Ships“, Alan Scott Miller examines the Titanic as a service, particularly a ferry service, to its end customers.

In “Project Management and the Discovery of the Titanic,” James Peter Murphy discusses the 1980’s project to find the wreck on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

Category C Activity: Lessons Learned from The Sinking of the Titanic

You can make these articles part of your PDU Plan and earn Category C PDUs. We have provided you with the educational references in this article, if you choose you can create your own Category C learning activity keep track of the Project Management lessons you have learned and the educational time you spent on the activity. For more information see our article which describes Category C Self-Directed Learning (SDL), the Three Learning Questions and SMART goal setting.