Led by Isambard Kingdom Brunel Simulacrum
About this course
The Great Western Railway and the SS Great Britain were delivered. The SS Great Eastern was a financial catastrophe that bankrupted the company. The difference was initiation: what was defined, what was assumed, and who was consulted before the first piece of work began.
Brunel learned from every project — including the ones that went wrong. This course covers the initiation phase: project charter, scope statement, WBS, stakeholder register, assumptions, and the handover to planning.
Led by Isambard Kingdom Brunel Simulacrum.
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Led by Isambard Kingdom Brunel Simulacrum
The question
The project charter authorises the project to begin. It states the objectives, the scope, the constraints, and who is accountable. What does it contain — and what happens when a project starts without one?
Outcome
The student can write a project charter and describe the initiation phase outputs.
Sub-units
Led by Isambard Kingdom Brunel Simulacrum
The question
Scope creep is the silent project killer. Gold-plating delivers more than was asked for and costs money that was not budgeted. The WBS decomposes scope into manageable work packages. What is the difference — and who controls the scope baseline?
Outcome
The student can write a scope statement, build a two-level WBS, and apply a change control process to a scope request.
Sub-units
Led by Isambard Kingdom Brunel Simulacrum
The question
Some stakeholders want the project to succeed. Some want it to fail. Some don't care until it affects them. The power/interest matrix tells you who to manage actively and who to monitor. What does "engagement strategy" mean in practice?
Outcome
The student can produce a stakeholder register and plot engagement strategies.
Sub-units
Led by Isambard Kingdom Brunel Simulacrum
The question
An assumption is something you are treating as true for planning purposes. The GWR assumed that broad gauge would be adopted nationally. It wasn't. How does the pre-mortem technique surface dangerous assumptions before they become expensive failures?
Outcome
The student can identify project assumptions, constraints, and dependencies, and apply the pre-mortem.
Sub-units
Led by Isambard Kingdom Brunel Simulacrum
The question
The SS Great Eastern was the largest engineering achievement of the nineteenth century and a financial disaster. What went wrong in initiation — and what would a proper project charter have changed?
Outcome
The student can describe the initiation-to-planning handover and analyse a real initiation failure.
Sub-units