Project management is perhaps one of the oldest arts practiced by mankind, we call it an art because it involves a coordinated ability to execute objectives, carried out in a conscious, rational and controlled manner. In other words: the efficient execution of good project practices. There are several notions about what a project is, and one of the most widespread and accepted is given by PMI: "A temporary effort undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result" ( PMBOK, 2017). Example of such efforts report from ancient times. The pyramids of Egypt, the Greek Acropolis or the Roman coliseum itself are examples of projects.
Another ancient art to mankind is manufacturing, an evolution of craftsmanship, which irrigates trade routes and interconnects nations until today. Manufacturing is nothing more than a manual process for the production of a product, in a cyclical and repetitive manner. In ancient times craftsmen shared their knowledge and best practices with each other in what were known as guilds.
Looking at ancient societies, we saw a great distinction between functions. Public works, which were seen as projects, were in the hands of the military, members of the royalty/government, and engineers. While the process of producing goods was the responsibility of another part of society, the same part that took care of the burghs - highly fortified units of land - and that took care of craft production and trade. The people who engaged in these activities became known as the bourgeoisie.
Both the bourgeoisie and the military made use of the same way of sharing knowledge: through guilds, groups of society that shared the same trade and shared the good practices of the trade among themselves. It was common for the good practices of a guild to be a secret restricted to the members of the guild, since this would give the members a competitive advantage in the marketplace. As well as being a testament to the quality of the product.
An example of this were the porcelain guilds, which constantly claimed their renown, vying for world production. Dutch, Chinese, Portuguese, and even Italians fought for leadership in this area.
One could see that there were professionals dedicated to making projects, and professionals dedicated to making products. What differentiated one from the other was basically two things: complexity and repetitiveness. The professionals dedicated to projects were usually known as engineers, or designers.
Engineering itself was a profession intrinsic to militarism, until, in 1768, John Smeaton decided to call himself a civil engineer, and started using engineering knowledge for the public good - or civil, as you prefer. This break can be seen as the beginning of the transition from traditional, millenarian management, marked by a strong functional hierarchy in the army, to a more human and also urbanized management.
John Smeaton followed the logic of the industrial revolution, valuing specialization. A similar factor occurred in the 20th century, with the emergence of modernist movements, such as the Bauhaus, The Stijl and Le Modulor, where architects or designers aimed at a more artistic approach to their work, with a well-defined philosophy and a versatile approach to the demands of society. Then arises the idea of a new architecture, and with it a new professional.
From the Bauhaus comes perhaps one of the first modern techniques of agile methods: Design Thinking, whose roots go back to 1919. Although the term was only really popularized by IDEO - an innovation consultancy - more than half a century later. The Bauhaus emerged during the second industrial revolution, being a consequence of the specialization and modernization thinking inherent to this revolution.
The same happened with the product area, which from the first industrial revolution onwards enjoyed an industrial factory system, mass production, division of labor functions, and the introduction of labor norms and standards. Until the industries started to understand processes as something intrinsic to quality production. Perhaps creating the modern notion of process with a sequential use of activities that uses "input" inputs to produce "output" inputs.
The peak of this system, or its synthesis, comes with Fordism, a production process extremely focused on specialization, standardization, and the use of norms for the production process. Henry Ford was the father of this process that influenced generations and boosted the North American industrialization process.
During the first world war, there was a substantial increase in manufacturing activities, partly driven by the manufacture of munitions and canned food. During World War II, quality was considered an advantage in the battlefield, with the United States forcing its suppliers to use techniques such as statistical quality control to ensure the safety of their weapons.
After World War II, governments and companies began to look for more efficient ways to use their resources, due to the lack of resources in the post-war period. In 1956 Dupont created the Critical Path model, widely used in traditional project management, followed by NASA's creation in '58 and the U.S. Navy's PERT (program evaluation review), both focused on project analysis.
At the same time the Japanese started to be influenced by experts from q