Scientific Management and its History
“Management is, above all, a practice where art, science and craft meet.” What an innovative thought it is! Project Management is one of the practices that have proved themselves to be success-driven. There are multiple theories and ways for project management wherein a theory of Scientific Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor helped shape the Project Management (PM) industry.
Frederick revolutionised the world of Scientific Management and his work inspired the foundation of one of the greatest universities in the world—Harvard Business School. However, before diving deep into the concepts of Fredrick’s theory, it is a must thing to understand the basics of project management.
What is Project Management?
To achieve specific project goals, businesses prefer to acquire a system where there are managed applications of processes, methods, skills, knowledge, and experience. ‘Project Criteria’ parameters determine the ways of building PM systems. Moreover, ‘Financial Deliverables’ is the main purpose behind PM systems and it has time and budget limitations.
Remember, management is an ongoing process. On the other hand, project management has finite variables such as specific timespan and deliverables. And hence, Project Management professionals must have a full span of skills; especially technical skills and management skills.
The 20th Century Story
In 1909, a well-qualified American Engineer master, Fredrick Taylor spiraled the theory of ‘Scientific Theory.’ It is commonly known as ‘Taylorism’ and this theory made him the ‘Father of Scientific Management.’ With his efforts on the understanding the scientific process of work, he developed various management methods.
In Taylorism, the theory believes that productivity and efficiency are the results of optimization of work and not the ways the workers were made work hard. It also explains the assumption that productivity could increase by making jobs simpler and their optimization. For that, it also assumed that managers were the connecting line between the workforce and efficient work.
Managers of that time did not interact with their subordinates and left them with only work. They used to leave the employees for projects to execute alone. However, Taylorism tells that organizations can enhance efficiency if managers worked closely with the workers.
The Squad of Principles
Taylorism, in a broader vision, is the application of industry engineering principles in order to create a system that minimizes waste, improves process and methods of production as well as fairly distribute goods. It has four general principles—
- Continue gathering and analyzing information. Converting it to laws and rules, sometimes even mathematical formulae to complete tasks.
- To hire and train workers, apply scientific approach.
- Blending science and workers for the scientifically developed techniques application.
- Segregating tasks between the subordinates and employees where managerial subordinates apply scientific techniques to planning and employees perform the tasks.
What Do We Know? What Have We Learnt?
Fredrick Taylor came to the conclusion of the scientific management theory through various studies and analyses. He approached this theory in a quantitative way by collecting and analysing data. He created a way out for better work and project management that proved right for every generation of workers. We hope that our audience has received a glimpse of one of the greatest theories of all the time.
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