an analysis of the impacts to the stakeholders and a stronger communication to the parties involved would have avoided the issue described?

I agree.  The success of a project strongly depends on its ability to achieve more than just saving on cost. A successful project is one in which cost, time, quality and scope are met (Watt, 2014). In the scenario provided, it appears that the focus of the owner was only about cost. Aside from stipulating the project was to be conducted at the least cost, the owner also indicated not wanting any permit (LaBrosse, 2010) which alludes to cost savings while also indicating resistance to quality. Obtaining a permit also means that the crucial stakeholders are involved. The lack of adherence to all these led to ignorance about risks which in turn became a reality post-completion. The author concludes the article with the following statement: “in a world enamored with people -just doing it- and -thinking outside the box-, we need folks who still know how to learn the rules, understand why they exist and create a safe environment for all." Do you agree that innovative people cannot be also people that understand, apply post-completion and adhere to standards? Why or why not? I disagree. As an engineer and researcher, I understand that every field has basic principles and it takes an understanding of the existing rules to establish gaps that should eventually lead to thinking outside the box and innovating new ones. True innovation needs to demonstrate a better way of more than just compliance but going beyond the set standards. For example, the scrum methodology requires daily meetings (Cervone, 2011). An innovation such as social media (WhatsApp) would not just permit members to raise their opinions and provide reports without a physical presence but would go beyond that to permit sharing of evidence for instance videos, voice notes, and pictures showing progress of work and obstacles. However, I understand the authors’ context of the use of the phrases innovation and thinking outside box to mean those who like shortcuts that are not well reasoned out. Within the story described in the article, which of the fundamental knowledge areas for managing projects (as per the PMBoK categorization) and which of the project life cycle phases do you see as crucial? Explain briefly why The two missing but crucial knowledge areas are project start-up and integration and project risk.  startup and integration would have enabled better planning including establishing cost and involving stakeholders who would have voice their interests and issues pertaining to how the project would have impacted them positively or negatively. This would have possibly enabled the identification of the purpose of the spillway. Since the dam was in the way of the road, the owners of the dam should have been one of the stakeholders. Their statements should have led to the examination of risk and coming up with mitigation plans. Thus, these two knowledge areas were missed. They are mostly needed during the planning phase. References Cervone, H. F. (2011). Understanding agile project management methods using Scrum. OCLC Systems & Services: International digital library perspectives, 27(1), 18-22. Watt, A. (2014). Project Management. BCcampus Open Textbook project. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License LaBrosse, M. (2010). The Hidden Costs and Dangers of the Shortcut. Project Smart. https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/the-hidden-costs-and-dangers-of-the-shortcut.php