In contrast to the disastrous project of Sydney Opera House (see my post from yesterday), the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, designed and built by architect Frank Gehry, is a much more than an spectacular museum of contemporary art in Bilbao, Spain.
It’s also a successful project, delivered on time and 3% under budget.
🚀More importantly, it produced the expected benefits, bringing 4 million visitors and injecting $1 Billion into the region (see ‘Clarity on Why’ below).
So why was Gehry so successful with the Guggenheim project and what lessons can take from it to make our Tech Projects successful?
📅Iterative Planning
Don’t think of planning as a static, abstract, bureaucratic exercise.
Planning is an active, iterative process of trying, learning and trying again.
To prove out his design, Gehry used sketches, wooden blocks, cardboard models, and these days, uses digital twins.
Planning is cheap compared to production build.
🛠️Experience
By the time Gehry build the Guggenheim Museum, he was 62 years old and had long list of increasingly ambitious projects.
His team had also built similar projects before.
Experience is valuable and needed for successful projects.
🔎Clarity on Why
To Gehry, the project was much more than just a building.
He asked “why are we doing this project?”
The officials wanted to do what Sydney Opera house had done for Australia, put Bilbao back on the map and bring back growth.
So that’s what he did.
For your Tech Projects, be clear on your ‘Why’, not just the project ‘What’.
