During a presentation at a “Software Best Practices” conference in Washington yesterday, my friend Tom Love (an object-oriented guru and project management consultant whose work you should be aware of) recommended an intriguing book called Building the Empire State. It was published in 1998, so it’s not exactly new; and it’s ostensibly about architecture and the construction of a physical building — i.e., the Empire State Building (or ESB, as the cogniscenti refer to it). If it were nothing more than that, it would be well worth reading, for it contains superb photocopies of 77 pages of single-spaced typewritten notes, written by author(s) unknown, during the construction of the massive building. Interspersed between the typewritten pages (which were typed on blue-lined graph paper and collected in a simple three-ring binder) are hundreds of black and white photographs of the construction effort.

For software developers and project managers, though, the book is much more than the historical notes of a construction effort; it stands as an elegant metaphor of any large development project, and any attempt to manage a project with a tight schedule. Of course, it’s hard comparing a development effort involving bricks (of which the ESB has 10 million) with a the development of intelligent “bits” that represent lines of program code; but nobody would would deny that the ESB was a huge effort: in addition to the 10 million bricks, it also involved 57,000 tons of steel, 62,000 cubic yards of concrete, 6,400 windows, and a project team that peaked at 3,500 workers.

And all of this came together at a speed that is still astonishing, 75 years later; as the opening chapter of the book explais, “… within just twenty months — from the first signed contracts with the architects in September 1929 to opening day ceremonies on May 1, 1931 — the Empire State was designed, engineered, erected, and ready for occupants [i.e., “installed,” or “deployed,” in the parlance of software system developers].” This sounds impressive, of course, but it’s not until you read another statistic that you really grasp the significance of the project schedule: at the height of the construction effort, the frame rose by more than a story a day. And what really caught my attention was another detail that Love pointed out in his presentation, and which I’ve not yet found in my first skim through the book: the designers were only six floors above the construction team. During the 1970s and 1980s, I used to refer to this kind of aggressive overlapping of analysis, design, implementation, and testing as “radical top-down development” — but this example is amazing!

More than anything else, though, the typewritten notes show that the entire ESB project was a labor of love, and that the project managers were intensely proud of what they had accomplished. The final page of notes offers these concluding remarks about the project; ask yourself whether you’ve ever been proud enough of any of your projects to have written words like these:

“A quotation from Ruskin, which has been used frequently as an inspirational thought in connection with building, follows:

‘Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone, let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when these stones will be held sacred, because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and the wrought substance of them - “See, ! this, our fathers did for us.’

“The Empire State Building is constructed to stand the rigors of future centuries. What its span of life will be in this ever-changing world - no man can foretell. Perhaps it will live on to see old Empires crumble, and new dynasties arise, mellowing with the passage of time, down through the future ages.

“Or, perhaps, the rapidly changing economic conditions of a new era will precipitate its destruction sooner than we care to anticipate. Conditions which in our time, dictated the doom of its architectural predecessor, the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, together with the architectural gem that was the near neighbor of the old hotel - Madison Square Garden.

“At the moment, however, we are astounded at the marvel of its birth. Title to the old building was acquired by the Owners on June 1, 1929. Demolition of the old building was started on September 22, 1929 and completely finished on March 12, 1930. The first steel columns for the new Empire State Building were set on April 7, 1930 and the building was completely finished on March 1, 1931. Within a period of twenty-one months, the entire project was conceived and brought to successful execution.

“This massive building now stands as a majestic symbol of the enterprise and efficiency of our age - offering mute tribute to promoter, financier, architect, engineer, builder, artisan and everyone who toiled to make it a reality - down to the humblest laborer.

“Viewed in the light of Faith, it stands out clearly against the sky as a noble monument reflecting the glory of God, Who had given such power to man.”