Management of Extreme Situations

2Project Management in Extreme Situations: The Manhattan Case

2.1. Introduction

Launched by the United States during the Second World War to design an atomic bomb, the Manhattan project occupies a special place in history in general and in project management in particular. It is a particularly interesting object of study for three reasons.

First of all, it is undoubtedly an extreme project (Lièvre 2014) because of the frightening innovation it brought to life and which undoubtedly constitutes a disruption in the history of humanity¹, the “unforeseeable uncertainties” (Loch et al. 2016) it had to manage throughout its development, because of its scale (130,000 people mobilized at the peak of the project), and finally because of its incredible speed (just under 3 years). Second, and because of these characteristics, the Manhattan project is often used in public debate to designate an organization capable of achieving extraordinary objectives. However, although it has indeed allowed the development, in record time, of a radical innovation, its organization and management remain little studied, paving the way to various interpretations on the transferability of this example to other situations. Finally, on a managerial level, it is often presented, wrongly as we will see, as the origin of modern project management methods (Lenfle and Loch 2010). In this chapter, we will analyze the management and organization of this project, which was extraordinary in many ways². To do this, ...