Talk:Association for Project Management

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Quotes about the origin of the APM[edit]

A first quote about the origin of the APM has been added to the lemma , see here. Looking into the origin and history of the APM I found some remarkable quotes about this topic. These quotes are arranged in a chronological order:

About the origin of the APM in the 1970s[edit]

First of all, parts of the intentions for the foundation of the UK branch of INTERNET was described in 1971 in the The Aeronautical Journal, in 1972. It reported:

"At the international meeting on Project Network Analysis, held at Zurich in June this year, the need to express by the organisers for the formation of permanent national groups to whom the Internet Committee would refer for information and assistance. It is also hoped that the future Internet Committee will, in fact, be formed by representatives from such groups. :A number of the UK delegates to the meeting have, therefore, met and agreed to form an ad hoc committee to determine the degree of interest in the formation of such a group. ...

An ad hoc commission has been formed to study the possibilities of setting up such a group. Those interested in participation should write to the chairman:

J.J. Grimshaw, Esq.

Beechams Research Laboratories Limited,

Brockham Park, Betchworth,

Surrey.

If there is sufficient response the committee proposes to organise an inaugural meeting later this year. The probable venue will be London.. "

(Source: The Aeronautical Journal, Vol 75. (1972), p. 680)

Second, the proceedings of the 4th INTERNET congress in Paris Project management in the seventies: congress book ... by the Association française pour la cybernétique économique et technique (AFCET) from 1974 mentioned the presence of J.J. Grimshaw as representative of the INTERNET-UK GB among other representatives present. It reads:

"Please contact any of these members of the Board in any matters concerning the organizing and initiating of activities or programs to carry out the objectives of INTERNET. They are at present your focal points in organizational matters. I thank you for your attention.

Mr H GEHRIGER ESTEC/ESRO NL

Mr R GILLIS Canadian Pacific CDN

Mr JJ GRIMSHAW INTERNET-UK GB .

Mr R GUTSCH Dornier Systems D

Dr MHA Hamdy UNIDO UN

Mr O Horberg NATPLAN S

Mr P KOCK Consultant F

Mrs V Machova UVTR CS

Dr M Vaccaro NASA USA

Please contact any of these members of the Board in any concerning the organization and initiating of activities or programma's..."

(Source: AFCET (1974, 18))

These are in line with Weaver (2007), who recalled that:

"The UK branch of INTERNET (now the APM), was originated by the ‘pioneering seven’ whose meeting at an INTERNET (later IPMA) expert seminar in Zurich in 1971 inspired them to start a UK branch, which held its first meeting in London in May 1972. The first executive meeting on INTERNET(UK) was held in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel, Stockholm on the 13 th May 1972 during the 3rd annual world congress of INTERNET. Jack Grimshaw was the original chairman, others in the founding group included Dr Jim Gordon and Dennis Gower. Annual membership fees were set at ₤1, and within a month membership had reached 78 (PMI at the time were charging ₤7)."

(Source: Patrick Weaver (2007), The origins of Modern Project Management. p. 22-23 footnote

The 1974 quote learns us, that J.J. Grimshaw was one of the nine board members of INTERNET in those days, among others such as the German Roland Gutsch, the Swedish Olof Hörberg and the French Pierre Koch. Another board member was the American Michael J. Vaccaro from NASA. Vaccaro was an early promoter of project management and project management simulation, such as a 1973 source mention:

"In 1962, Dr. Michael J. Vaccaro, Goddard's director of administration and management, theorized that a project management simulation could be developed. The simulation would enable potential project managers and staff members to gain..."

(Source: Educational Technology Publications, Incorporated, Audio-visual Technology and Learning, 1973, p. 46

Back to INTERNET-UK, apparently in 1974 it was represented in global INTERNET board. Its first chairman J.J. (Jack) Grimshaw in the 1970s was from the Information and Statistics Department, Beecham Research Laboratories (source), where he participated in research and co-authored a series of articles on biochemistry, nutrition and health. This is not the first place where you would expect project management to originate. One look at later APM chairmans of presidents reveals they also originated from different industries: construction, metallurgical chemistry, the academic world, and the railways. With the original founders of INTERNET (now IPMA) it was more or less the same story.

About the early development of the association[edit]

First of all, the initiation of INTERNET-UK was similar to other developments in European, as Pannenbaecker and Dworatschek (2005) explained:

".. 1968 the Network Planning Association in Sweden was founded. A key person in this time was Olof Hörberg, the first President of INTERNET. --- 1971 the Swiss Association of Engineers and Architects established the INTERNET-CH Group as collective Member of IMSA. --- 1972 the British organisation was inaugurated as “Internet (UK). --- 1973 INTERNET-A in Austria was founded. --- 1975 the Danish Project Management Society started. Steen Lichtenberg and Morten Fangel had organised the 3rd World Congress the year before in Stockholm. Later both became presidents of the INTERNET. --- 1979 the German GPM was founded after the 6th World Congress in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany)..."

(Source: Klaus Pannenbaecker and Sebastian Dworatschek (2005). "History of IPMA International Project Management Association (1965- 2005)..." at ipma.world. Accessed 26-06-2017. p. 3.)

Weaver (2007) explained that in the first decades there was a shift of focus from a technical orientation to a management orientation, which eventually lead to the rename of the global association and the UK branch. Weaver stated:

"By the 10th meeting in Vienna in 1990 this expansion of focus had really kicked in with the agenda formally including the expanded concept of ‘project management’ as a holistic, integrated process. This expanded format also had the effect of dramatically increasing attendance at the congress with a flow-on to increased interest in the member associations.

The emergence of a totally different ‘internet’ and this shifting focus prompted the name changes to IPMA (International Project Management Association) and APM (Association for Project Management) respectively. IPMA is now primarily an umbrella organisation for some 40+ national associations from around the world, APM is the UK member of IPMA and AIPM is the Australian member."

(Source: Patrick Weaver (2007), The origins of Modern Project Management. p. 23)

Looking at the early participants in the associations revealed the origins in different fields of industry and the academic world. Weaver (2007) argued, that there was one common ground of origin:

"... Well over 50% of the people in each of the groups that founded PMI in the USA, INTERNET in Europe (now IPMA) and the UK branch of INTERNET (now APM) were schedulers and a large proportion of the remainder cost engineers. . Recollections of early conferences and the early publications from these bodies suggest that their focus was almost exclusively on project controls and in particular ‘critical path scheduling’. It is therefore, reasonable to argue that the spread of scheduling linked to the need to make effective use of the data generated by the schedulers as they calculated their critical paths, was the catalyst that created modern project management."

(Source: Patrick Weaver (2007), The origins of Modern Project Management.)

-- Mdd (talk) 09:11, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]