title: Sexual dimorphism

text: Sexual dimorphism in immune function is a common pattern in vertebrates and also in a number of invertebrates. Most often, females are more 'immunocompetent' than males. This trait is not consistent among all animals, but differs depending on taxonomy, with the most female-biased immune systems being found in insects. In mammals this results in more frequent and severe infections in males and higher rates of autoimmune disorders in females. One potential cause may be differences in gene expression of immune cells between the sexes. Another explanation is that endocrinological differences between the sexes impact the immune system – for example, testosterone acts as an immunosuppressive agent.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: Phenotypic differences between sexes are evident even in cultured cells from tissues. For example, female muscle-derived stem cells have a better muscle regeneration efficiency than male ones. There are reports of several metabolic differences between male and female cells and they also respond to stress differently.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: In theory, larger females are favored by competition for mates, especially in polygamous species. Larger females offer an advantage in fertility, since the physiological demands of reproduction are limiting in females. Hence there is a theoretical expectation that females tend to be larger in species that are monogamous.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: Females are larger in many species of insects, many spiders, many fish, many reptiles, owls, birds of prey and certain mammals such as the spotted hyena, and baleen whales such as blue whale. As an example, in some species, females are sedentary, and so males must search for them. Fritz Vollrath and Geoff Parker argue that this difference in behaviour leads to radically different selection pressures on the two sexes, evidently favouring smaller males. Cases where the male is larger than the female have been studied as well, and require alternative explanations.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: One example of this type of sexual size dimorphism is the bat "Myotis nigricans", (black myotis bat) where females are substantially larger than males in terms of body weight, skull measurement, and forearm length. The interaction between the sexes and the energy needed to produce viable offspring make it favorable for females to be larger in this species. Females bear the energetic cost of producing eggs, which is much greater than the cost of making sperm by the males. The fecundity advantage hypothesis states that a larger female is able to produce more offspring and give them more favorable conditions to ensure their survival; this is true for most ectotherms. A larger female can provide parental care for a longer time while the offspring matures. The gestation and lactation periods are fairly long in "M. nigricans", the females suckling their offspring until they reach nearly adult size. They would not be able to fly and catch prey if they did not compensate for the additional mass of the offspring during this time. Smaller male size may be an adaptation to increase maneuverability and agility, allowing males to compete better with females for food and other resources.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: Some species of anglerfish also display extreme sexual dimorphism. Females are more typical in appearance to other fish, whereas the males are tiny rudimentary creatures with stunted digestive systems. A male must find a female and fuse with her: he then lives parasitically, becoming little more than a sperm-producing body in what amounts to an effectively hermaphrodite composite organism. A similar situation is found in the Zeus water bug "Phoreticovelia disparata" where the female has a glandular area on her back that can serve to feed a male, which clings to her (note that although males can survive away from females, they generally are not free-living). This is taken to the logical extreme in the Rhizocephala crustaceans, like the Sacculina, where the male injects itself into the female's body and becomes nothing more than sperm producing cells, to the point that the superorder used to be mistaken for hermaphroditic.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: Some plant species also exhibit dimorphism in which the females are significantly larger than the males, such as in the moss "Dicranum" and the liverwort "Sphaerocarpos". There is some evidence that, in these genera, the dimorphism may be tied to a sex chromosome, or to chemical signalling from females.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: Another complicated example of sexual dimorphism is in "Vespula squamosa", the southern yellowjacket. In this wasp species, the female workers are the smallest, the male workers are slightly larger, and the female queens are significantly larger than her female worker and male counterparts.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: In 1871, Charles Darwin advanced the theory of sexual selection, which related sexual dimorphism with sexual selection.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: The first step towards sexual dimorphism is the size differentiation of sperm and eggs (anisogamy). Anisogamy and the usually large number of small male gametes relative to the larger female gametes usually lies in the development of strong sperm competition, because small sperm enable organisms to produce a large number of sperm, and make males (or male function of hermaphrodites) more redundant.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: This intensifies male competition for mates and promotes the evolution of other sexual dimorphism in many species, especially in vertebrates including mammals. However, in some species females compete for mates in ways more usually associated with males (usually species in which males invest a lot in rearing offspring and thus are no longer considered as so redundant).


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: Sexual dimorphism by size is evident in some extinct species such as the velociraptor. In the case of velociraptors the sexual size dimorphism may have been caused by two factors: male competition for hunting ground to attract mates, and/or female competition for nesting locations and mates, males being a scarce breeding resource.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: Volvocine algae have been useful in understanding the evolution of sexual dimorphism and species like the beetle "C. maculatus", where the females are larger than the males, are used to study its underlying genetic mechanisms.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: In many non-monogamous species, the benefit to a male's reproductive fitness of mating with multiple females is large, whereas the benefit to a female's reproductive fitness of mating with multiple males is small or nonexistent. In these species, there is a selection pressure for whatever traits enable a male to have more matings. The male may therefore come to have different traits from the female.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: These traits could be ones that allow him to fight off other males for control of territory or a harem, such as large size or weapons; or they could be traits that females, for whatever reason, prefer in mates. Male–male competition poses no deep theoretical questions but mate choice does.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: Females may choose males that appear strong and healthy, thus likely to possess "good alleles" and give rise to healthy offspring. In some species, however, females seem to choose males with traits that do not improve offspring survival rates, and even traits that reduce it (potentially leading to traits like the peacock's tail). Two hypotheses for explaining this fact are the sexy son hypothesis and the handicap principle.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: The sexy son hypothesis states that females may initially choose a trait because it improves the survival of their young, but once this preference has become widespread, females must continue to choose the trait, even if it becomes harmful. Those that do not will have sons that are unattractive to most females (since the preference is widespread) and so receive few matings.


title: Sexual dimorphism

text: The handicap principle states that a male who survives despite possessing some sort of handicap thus proves that the rest of his genes are "good alleles". If males with "bad alleles" could not survive the handicap, females may evolve to choose males with this sort of handicap; the trait is acting as a hard-to-fake signal of fitness.


title: Unicorn

text: The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead.


title: Unicorn

text: In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years or so been depicted as a white horse-like or goat-like animal with a long straight horn with spiralling grooves, cloven hooves, and sometimes a goat's beard. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could be captured only by a virgin. In encyclopedias, its horn was described as having the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. In medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of the narwhal was sometimes sold as a unicorn horn.


title: Unicorn

text: A bovine type of unicorn is thought by some scholars to have been depicted in seals of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization, the interpretation remaining controversial. An equine form of the unicorn was mentioned by the ancient Greeks in accounts of natural history by various writers, including Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, Aelian and Cosmas Indicopleustes. The Bible also describes an animal, the re'em, which some translations render as "unicorn".


title: Unicorn

text: The unicorn continues to hold a place in popular culture. It is often used as a symbol of fantasy or rarity.


title: Unicorn

text: A creature with a single horn, conventionally called a unicorn, is the most common image on the soapstone stamp seals of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization ("IVC"), from the centuries around 2000 BC. It has a body more like a cow than a horse, and a curved horn that goes forward, then up at the tip. The mysterious feature depicted coming down from the front of the back is usually shown; it may represent a harness or other covering. Typically the unicorn faces a vertical object with at least two stages; this is variously described as a "ritual offering stand", an incense burner, or a manger. The animal is always in profile on Indus seals, but the theory that it represents animals with two horns, one hiding the other, is disproved by a (much smaller) number of small terracotta unicorns, probably toys, and the profile depictions of bulls, where both horns are clearly shown. It is thought that the unicorn was the symbol of a powerful "clan or merchant community", but may also have had some religious significance.


title: Unicorn

text: In South Asia the unicorn is only seen during the IVC period — it disappears in South Asian art ever since. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer notes the IVC unicorn to not have any "direct connection" with later unicorn motifs observed in other parts of world; nonetheless it remains possible that the IVC unicorn had contributed to later myths of fantastical one-horned creatures in West Asia.


title: Unicorn

text: Unicorns are not found in Greek mythology, but rather in the accounts of natural history, for Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the reality of unicorns, which they believed lived in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them. The earliest description is from Ctesias, who in his book "Indika" ("On India") described them as wild asses, fleet of foot, having a horn a cubit and a half () in length, and colored white, red and black. Unicorn meat was said to be too bitter to eat.


title: Unicorn

text: Ctesias got his information while living in Persia. Unicorns on a relief sculpture have been found at the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis in Iran. Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, the oryx (a kind of antelope) and the so-called "Indian ass" (ἰνδικὸς ὄνος).


title: Unicorn

text: Pliny the Elder mentions the oryx and an Indian ox (perhaps a Greater one-horned rhinoceros) as one-horned beasts, as well as "a very fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, which projects from the middle of its forehead, two cubits [] in length." In "On the Nature of Animals" ("Περὶ Ζῴων Ἰδιότητος", "De natura animalium"), Aelian, quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces also a one-horned horse (iii. 41; iv. 52), and says (xvi. 20) that the "monoceros" () was sometimes called "cartazonos" (), which may be a form of the Arabic "karkadann", meaning "rhinoceros".


title: Unicorn

text: Cosmas Indicopleustes, a merchant of Alexandria who lived in the 6th century, made a voyage to India and subsequently wrote works on cosmography. He gives a description of a unicorn based on four brass figures in the palace of the King of Ethiopia. He states, from report, that "it is impossible to take this ferocious beast alive; and that all its strength lies in its horn. When it finds itself pursued and in danger of capture, it throws itself from a precipice, and turns so aptly in falling, that it receives all the shock upon the horn, and so escapes safe and sound".


title: Unicorn

text: Medieval knowledge of the fabulous beast stemmed from biblical and ancient sources, and the creature was variously represented as a kind of wild ass, goat, or horse.


title: Unicorn

text: The predecessor of the medieval bestiary, compiled in Late Antiquity and known as "Physiologus" ("Φυσιολόγος"), popularized an elaborate allegory in which a unicorn, trapped by a maiden (representing the Virgin Mary), stood for the Incarnation. As soon as the unicorn sees her, it lays its head on her lap and falls asleep. This became a basic emblematic tag that underlies medieval notions of the unicorn, justifying its appearance in both secular and religious art. The unicorn is often shown hunted, raising parallels both with vulnerable virgins and sometimes the Passion of Christ. The myths refer to a beast with one horn that can only be tamed by a virgin; subsequently, some writers translated this into an allegory for Christ's relationship with the Virgin Mary.


title: Unicorn

text: The unicorn also figured in courtly terms: for some 13th-century French authors such as Thibaut of Champagne and Richard de Fournival, the lover is attracted to his lady as the unicorn is to the virgin. With the rise of humanism, the unicorn also acquired more orthodox secular meanings, emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage. It plays this role in Petrarch's "Triumph of Chastity", and on the reverse of Piero della Francesca's portrait of Battista Strozzi, paired with that of her husband Federico da Montefeltro (painted 1472–74), Bianca's triumphal car is drawn by a pair of unicorns.


title: Unicorn

text: However, when the unicorn appears in the medieval legend of "Barlaam and Josaphat", ultimately derived from the life of the Buddha, it represents death, as the "Golden Legend" explains. Unicorns in religious art largely disappeared after they were condemned by Molanus after the Council of Trent.


title: Unicorn

text: The unicorn, tamable only by a virgin woman, was well established in medieval lore by the time Marco Polo described them as "scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant's. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead... They have a head like a wild boar's… They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at. They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions." It is clear that Marco Polo was describing a rhinoceros.


title: Unicorn

text: The horn itself and the substance it was made of was called alicorn, and it was believed that the horn holds magical and medicinal properties. The Danish physician Ole Worm determined in 1638 that the alleged alicorns were the tusks of narwhals. Such beliefs were examined wittily and at length in 1646 by Sir Thomas Browne in his "Pseudodoxia Epidemica".


title: Unicorn

text: False alicorn powder, made from the tusks of narwhals or horns of various animals, was sold in Europe for medicinal purposes as late as 1741. The alicorn was thought to cure many diseases and have the ability to detect poisons, and many physicians would make "cures" and sell them. Cups were made from alicorn for kings and given as a gift; these were usually made of ivory or walrus ivory. Entire horns were very precious in the Middle Ages and were often really the tusks of narwhals.


title: Unicorn

text: The unicorn, through its intemperance and not knowing how to control itself, for the love it bears to fair maidens forgets its ferocity and wildness; and laying aside all fear it will go up to a seated damsel and go to sleep in her lap, and thus the hunters take it.


title: Unicorn

text: The famous late Gothic series of seven tapestry hangings "The Hunt of the Unicorn" are a high point in European tapestry manufacture, combining both secular and religious themes. The tapestries now hang in the Cloisters division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In the series, richly dressed noblemen, accompanied by huntsmen and hounds, pursue a unicorn against "mille-fleur" backgrounds or settings of buildings and gardens. They bring the animal to bay with the help of a maiden who traps it with her charms, appear to kill it, and bring it back to a castle; in the last and most famous panel, "The Unicorn in Captivity", the unicorn is shown alive again and happy, chained to a pomegranate tree surrounded by a fence, in a field of flowers. Scholars conjecture that the red stains on its flanks are not blood but rather the juice from pomegranates, which were a symbol of fertility. However, the true meaning of the mysterious resurrected unicorn in the last panel is unclear. The series was woven about 1500 in the Low Countries, probably Brussels or Liège, for an unknown patron. A set of six engravings on the same theme, treated rather differently, were engraved by the French artist Jean Duvet in the 1540s.


title: Unicorn

text: Another famous set of six tapestries of "Dame à la licorne" ("Lady with the unicorn") in the Musée de Cluny, Paris, were also woven in the Southern Netherlands before 1500, and show the five senses (the gateways to temptation) and finally Love ("A mon seul desir" the legend reads), with unicorns featured in each piece. Facsimiles of these unicorn tapestries were woven for permanent display in Stirling Castle, Scotland, to take the place of a set recorded in the castle in a 16th-century inventory.


title: Unicorn

text: A rather rare, late-15th-century, variant depiction of the "hortus conclusus" in religious art combined the Annunciation to Mary with the themes of the "Hunt of the Unicorn" and "Virgin and Unicorn", so popular in secular art. The unicorn already functioned as a symbol of the Incarnation and whether this meaning is intended in many "prima facie" secular depictions can be a difficult matter of scholarly interpretation. There is no such ambiguity in the scenes where the archangel Gabriel is shown blowing a horn, as hounds chase the unicorn into the Virgin's arms, and a little Christ Child descends on rays of light from God the Father. The Council of Trent finally banned this somewhat over-elaborated, if charming, depiction, partly on the grounds of realism, as no one now believed the unicorn to be a real animal.


title: Unicorn

text: Shakespeare scholars describe unicorns being captured by a hunter standing in front of a tree, the unicorn goaded into charging; the hunter would step aside the last moment and the unicorn would embed its horn deeply into the tree (See annotations of Timon of Athens, Act 4, scene 3, c. line 341: "wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury".)


title: Unicorn

text: In heraldry, a unicorn is often depicted as a horse with a goat's cloven hooves and beard, a lion's tail, and a slender, spiral horn on its forehead (non-equine attributes may be replaced with equine ones, as can be seen from the following gallery). Whether because it was an emblem of the Incarnation or of the fearsome animal passions of raw nature, the unicorn was not widely used in early heraldry, but became popular from the 15th century. Though sometimes shown collared and chained, which may be taken as an indication that it has been tamed or tempered, it is more usually shown collared with a broken chain attached, showing that it has broken free from its bondage.


title: Unicorn

text: In heraldry the unicorn is best known as a symbol of Scotland: the unicorn was believed to be the natural enemy of the lion – a symbol that the English royals had adopted around a hundred years before Two unicorns supported the royal arms of the King of Scots and Duke of Rothesay, and since the 1707 union of England and Scotland, the royal arms of the United Kingdom have been supported by a unicorn along with an English lion. Two versions of the royal arms exist: that used in Scotland gives more emphasis to the Scottish elements, placing the unicorn on the left and giving it a crown, whereas the version used in England and elsewhere gives the English elements more prominence. John Guillim, in his book; "A Display of Heraldry", has illustrated the unicorn as a symbol of power, honor and respect.


title: Unicorn

text: Golden coins known as the unicorn and half-unicorn, both with a unicorn on the obverse, were used in Scotland in the 15th and 16th century. In the same realm, carved unicorns were often used as finials on the pillars of Mercat crosses, and denoted that the settlement was a royal burgh. Certain noblemen such as the Earl of Kinnoull were given special permission to use the unicorn in their arms, as an augmentation of honour. The crest for Clan Cunningham bears a unicorn head.


title: Unicorn

text: By the beginning of the 21st Century, unicorns became a queer icon, second only to the rainbow flag, symbolizing queerness. The rainbow flag, created by American artist Gilbert Baker in 1978 as a joyous symbol of the diversity of the queer community, became prominent during the gay rights protests of the 1970s and 1980s. Unicorns, which were intrinsically linked to rainbows since the Victorian Era, became symbol of the queer community.


title: Unicorn

text: There is no consensus on how the unicorn became a gay icon. Alice Fisher, an editor of Observer Design magazine, notes that the values of a unicorn – as rare and magical – have resulted in the word being used with various connotations. However, she argues that the Victorian association between rainbows and unicorns has resulted in unicorns becoming a queer icon.


title: Unicorn

text: When directly asked, queer people give different answers. There are compelling stories about their own close personal relationship with unicorns. They often relate to one or more of the following aspects: uniqueness, magical quality, elusiveness and gender fluidity.


title: Unicorn

text: Queer individuals tend to relate to the unicorn because of their unique sexual orientation and gender identity. A New Orleans journalist, Tracey Anne Duncan, described her connection to unicorn when she watched "The Last Unicorn" as a child. In the film, the protagonist believed she was one of a kind throughout her life. Tracey was able to relate to that feeling, even though she didn't really know what "her kind" was at that time.


title: Unicorn

text: The unicorn is an imaginary animal that lives in a world of myths and legends. Queer people, whose existence seems to blur the lines between societal norms of masculinity and femininity, may feel like they don't fully belong in this world. It explains their interests in mythical creatures such as unicorns, mermaids, and fairies.


title: Unicorn

text: Some argue that the gender fluidity of the unicorn makes it a suitable representation of the LGBT community. In ancient myths, the unicorn is portrayed as male, whereas in the modern times, it is depicted as a female creature.


title: Unicorn

text: An animal called the "re'em" () is mentioned in several places in the Hebrew Bible, often as a metaphor representing strength. The allusions to the "re'em" as a wild, untamable animal of great strength and agility, with mighty horn or horns best fit the aurochs ("Bos primigenius"); this view is further supported by the Assyrian cognate word "rimu," which is often used as a metaphor of strength, and is depicted as a powerful, fierce, wild mountain bull with large horns. This animal was often depicted in ancient Mesopotamian art in profile, with only one horn visible.


title: Unicorn

text: The translators of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible (1611) followed the Greek Septuagint ("monokeros") and the Latin Vulgate ("unicornis") and employed "unicorn" to translate "re'em", providing a recognizable animal that was proverbial for its untamable nature. The American Standard Version translates this term "wild ox" in each case.


title: Unicorn

text: The classical Jewish understanding of the Bible did not identify the "Re'em" animal as the unicorn. However, some rabbis in the Talmud debate the proposition that the "Tahash" animal (Exodus 25, 26, 35, 36 and 39; Numbers 4; and Ezekiel 16:10) was a domestic, single-horned kosher creature that existed in Moses' time, or that it was similar to the "keresh" animal described in Morris Jastrow's Talmudic dictionary as "a kind of antelope, unicorn".


title: Unicorn

text: The "qilin" (), a creature in Chinese mythology, is sometimes called "the Chinese unicorn", and some ancient accounts describe a single horn as its defining feature. However, it is more accurately described as a that looks less unicorn than chimera, with the body of a deer, the head of a lion, green scales and a long forwardly-curved horn. The Japanese version ("kirin") more closely resembles the Western unicorn, even though it is based on the Chinese "qilin". The Quẻ Ly of Vietnamese myth, similarly sometimes mistranslated "unicorn" is a symbol of wealth and prosperity that made its first appearance during the Duong Dynasty, about 600 CE, to Emperor Duong Cao To, after a military victory which resulted in his conquest of Tây Nguyên. In November 2012 the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences, as well as the Korea News Service, reported that the Kiringul had been found, which is associated with a kirin ridden by King Dongmyeong of Goguryeo.


title: Unicorn

text: Beginning in the Ming Dynasty, the "qilin" became associated with giraffes, after Zheng He's voyage to East Africa brought a pair of the long-necked animals and introduced them at court in Nanjing as "qilin". The resemblance to the "qilin" was noted in the giraffe's ossicones (bony protrusions from the skull resembling horns), graceful movements, and peaceful demeanor.


title: Unicorn

text: Shanhaijing (117) also mentioned "Bo"-horse (), a chimera horse with ox tail, single horn, white body, and its sound like person calling. The creature is lived at Honest-head Mountain. Guo Pu in his "jiangfu" said that "Bo"-horse able to walk on water. Another similar creature also mentioned in Shanhaijing (80) to live in Mount Winding-Centre as "Bo" (), but with black tail, tiger's teeth and claws, and also devour leopards and tigers.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American video game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded by Christopher Weaver in 1986 as a division of Media Technology Limited, and in 1999 became a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media. In its first fifteen years, it was a video game developer and self-published its titles. In 2001, Bethesda spun off its own in-house development team into Bethesda Game Studios, and Bethesda Softworks retained only its publishing function. In 2021, Microsoft purchased ZeniMax, maintaining that the company will continue to operate as a separate business.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: Prior to founding Bethesda Softworks, Christopher Weaver was a technology forecaster and a communications engineer in the television and cable industries. After finishing grad school, he was hired by the American Broadcasting Company, where he wrote several memos about "the importance of alternative distribution systems and how satellites and broadband networks would impact network television", which landed him the position of manager of technology forecasting. After multiple national magazines quoted his articles on "the exciting prospects for cabled distribution systems", he was recruited by the National Cable Television Association and created its Office of Science and Technology. In that capacity, he helped design high-speed data communication systems for several member companies of the association. Eventually, Weaver became the chief engineer for the United States House Subcommittee on Communications, where he influenced legislation that affected the telephone, television, and cable industries.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In the meantime, Weaver had also founded VideoMagic Laboratories with a friend from the Architecture Machine Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They had put together a 400-page business plan to commercialize their prior lab work and, through the Industrial Liaison Office at MIT, they came in contact with a wealthy family in the electronics industry that provided VideoMagic with venture capital. The company developed several technologies, including location-based entertainment systems, that Weaver deemed "radical and cutting-edge" but put out prematurely, causing little commercial return. The funding family, having financial issues of its own, dropped out of the venture and sold off some of VideoMagic's properties. After leaving the House Subcommittee some years later, Weaver established Media Technology Associates, Limited (renamed Media Technology Limited in March 1988) in June 1981. The company provided engineering and media consulting for private companies and government organizations. Media Technology had offices in Maryland and New York.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: At Media Technology, Weaver worked with Ed Fletcher, an electrical engineer with whom he had collaborated at VideoMagic, on video games for LaserDisc-based systems until that industry crashed in 1984. While waiting for potential new contracts, the company acquired an Amiga personal computer with which the two began to experiment. Fletcher was a fan of American football and suggested that they develop a football video game for the system, which Weaver supported despite no interest in the sport. Fletcher developed the game, later named "Gridiron!", out of Weaver's house in Bethesda, Maryland, in roughly nine months. His initial approach was to use lookup tables to map player inputs to predetermined outcomes. Weaver disliked this concept and, at his behest, he and Fletcher devised a more realistic, physics-based system. No artists or animators were involved in the project, which gave the game a sub-par graphical presentation for the time.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: Weaver formed Bethesda Softworks "on the proverbial kitchen table" of his Bethesda home as a division of Media Technology on June 28, 1986. The formation was described as an experiment "to see if the PC market was a viable place to develop games". Weaver originally named the company "Softwerke" but found that the name was taken by a company based in Virginia. Weaver and the owner of that company agreed to co-exist rather than fight over the title, and Weaver changed the name of his company to Bethesda Softworks. He had considered creating a unique name, such as one using the word "magic" after a quote from Arthur C. Clarke, but "Bethesda Softworks" ultimately stuck. Unlike VideoMagic, Bethesda Softworks was entirely self-funded, starting with roughly , and was not attached to any business plan. "Gridiron!" was released as the company's first game later in 1986 for the Amiga, Atari ST, and Commodore 64 systems. The initial release of a few hundred copies distributed in plastic bags was sold out within one week, to the surprise of Bethesda Softworks.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: Early games scored respectably in the gaming press. Electronic Arts was working on the first "John Madden Football", and hired Bethesda to help finish developing it, and acquired distribution rights for future versions of "Gridiron!". In June 1988, after no new cross-console version of "Gridiron!" had been released, Bethesda stopped work on the project and sued Electronic Arts for , claiming EA halted the release while incorporating many of its elements into "Madden". The case was resolved out of court.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: Courtney Cox (later known for her role in the sitcom Friends) worked at the publisher briefly in the 1980s.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In 1990, the company moved from Bethesda to Rockville, Maryland. By February 1993, the company employed 40 people.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: The first game Bethesda published and developed, based on a popular film franchise, was The Terminator for the MS-DOS. The title was released in July 1991, coinciding with the theatrical release of the film .


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In 1994, the company released its best-known project at the time, . The game, the first in "The Elder Scrolls" role-playing video game series was the work of Programmer Julian Lefay, Director and Producer Vijay Lakshman as well as others. Several sequels have been released since.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: Between 1994 and 1997, Bethesda was developing a space combat game titled The 10th Planet. It was a collaboration between Bethesda and Roland Emmerich's Centropolis Entertainment. During development, Centropolis chose to stop working on the game due to the company's commitments to its films. The project was never released.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In 1995, Bethesda Softworks acquired "Noctropolis" developer Flashpoint Productions, which Brent Erickson had founded in 1992.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In 1997, Bethesda acquired XL Translab, a Washington, D.C., graphics company that stemmed from the Catholic University School of Architecture and Planning. It was moved to Bethesda Softworks' Rockville headquarters. XL Translab had previously done work for PBS and "Fortune" 500 companies. By 1996, the company had become the third-biggest player in the privately held PC publishing industry after LucasArts and Interplay Entertainment with 75 employees by that year and revenues of $25 million by 1997.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In June/July 97, Bethesda announced a partnership with CBS Enterprises to produce the first-ever true companion PC series of games for the television series . By December 1997, the first CD-ROM game was still in production.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: For "", Bethesda developed XnGine, a 3D game engine, replacing the raycasting engine used for "Arena". The engine was used in "", "", "Daggerfall", and "". In 1997 and 1998, Bethesda released two "The Elder Scrolls" spin-offs based on "Daggerfall" code—"" and ""—neither of which enjoyed the success of "Daggerfall" and "Arena". The downturn in sales was not limited just to "The Elder Scrolls" franchise, and the company considered filing for bankruptcy as a result. "Battlespire" and "Redguard" were the last games to use XnGine.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In October 1999, Pete Hines joined Bethesda to head up its marketing department, running it as what he described as a one-man band. At the start of his tenure, the company had employed around 15 people in its Rockville headquarters.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In 1999, Weaver and Robert A. Altman formed the holding company ZeniMax Media. In an interview with "Edge", he described the company as being a top-level administrative structure rather than a "parent company" for its holdings, explaining that "ZeniMax and Bethesda for all intents and purposes are one thing. Bethesda has no accounting department, we have no finance, we have no legal, our legal department [and] our financial department is ZeniMax, we all operate as one unit." ZeniMax acquired Media Technology in July 1999 and Bethesda Softworks was reorganized as a division of ZeniMax. By then Bethesda employed nearly 100 people.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In 2001, Bethesda Game Studios was established, changing Bethesda Softworks to being a publishing brand of ZeniMax Media.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In 2002, Weaver stopped being employed by ZeniMax. He later filed a lawsuit against ZeniMax, claiming he was ousted by his new business partners after giving them access to his brand and was owed in severance pay. ZeniMax filed counterclaims and moved to dismiss the case, claiming Weaver had gone through emails of other employees to find evidence. This dismissal was later vacated on appeal, and the parties settled out of court. Weaver remained a major shareholder in the company: as of 2007, he said that he still owned 33% of ZeniMax's stock. Providence Equity bought 25% of ZeniMax's stock in late 2007, and an additional stake in 2010.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In 2007, the "Fallout" franchise was acquired by Bethesda Softworks from Interplay Entertainment and the development of "Fallout 3" was handed over to Bethesda Game Studios. "Fallout 3" was released on October 28, 2008. Five downloadable content packs for "Fallout 3" were released in the year following its release—"Operation: Anchorage", "The Pitt", "Broken Steel", "Point Lookout", and "Mothership Zeta". Obsidian Entertainment's new "Fallout" title, "" was published in 2010. "Fallout 4" was released on November 10, 2015.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: Between 2004 and 2008, ZeniMax's subsidiaries Mud Duck Productions and Vir2L Studios released 4 bowling games for various platforms, AMF Bowling 2004, AMF Xtreme Bowling 2006, AMF Bowling World Lanes and AMF Bowling Pinbusters!.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In January 2006, Bethesda acquired the rights to the Star Trek series of video games. The first game published by the company was , released in 2006.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In September 2009, Bethesda filed a lawsuit against Interplay Entertainment, after being unsatisfied with Interplay's development of the "Fallout" massively multiplayer online game project. Bethesda stopped funding the project, and Interplay was forced to abandon work on it.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: Between 2007 and 2010, Bethesda raised in new capital from Providence Equity Partners to fund expansion efforts. In February 2008, the company opened a European publishing arm in London, named ZeniMax Europe, to distribute titles throughout UK/EMEA territories under the Bethesda Softworks brand. This was followed in by opening publishing offices in Tokyo, Frankfurt, Paris, Eindhoven, Hong Kong, Sydney and Moscow in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2018 respectively.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: On June 24, 2009, ZeniMax Media acquired id Software, whose titles, including "Rage", would be published by Bethesda Softworks. Between 2009 and 2012, the company expanded publishing operations, with games from independent third-party developers such as Rebellion Developments's "Rogue Warrior", Artificial Mind and Movement's "Wet", Splash Damage's "Brink", and inXile's "".


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In 2011, Bethesda filed a lawsuit against Mojang (makers of "Minecraft") for using "Scrolls" as the name of a new digital card game, which sounded too close to "The Elder Scrolls" trademarked by Bethesda.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In the early 2010s, Bethesda Softworks published games such as "Dishonored", "", and "The Evil Within."


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In the mid-2010s, Bethesda began to experiment with new kinds of games, releasing "Fallout Shelter", its first mobile, free-to-play game in the summer of 2015. A year later, it released a reboot of id Software's "Doom", after several years of development as a failed attempt to produce a sequel to "Doom 3". Later that year, Zen Studios released virtual pinball adaptations of three games that Bethesda released during the decade thus far ("The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim", "Fallout 4" and the 2016 reboot of "Doom") as the "Bethesda Pinball" collection for its pinball games. Bethesda went on to release two more free-to-play mobile games based on "The Elder Scrolls" series, a card battle game titled "" in 2017 and a first-person role-playing game titled "" in 2019.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: When Nintendo unveiled its new hybrid console, the Nintendo Switch, Bethesda expressed support for it and released ports of "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" and "Doom" for that system in November 2017. A year later, it also ported "Fallout Shelter", and has future plans to do the same for its two "Elder Scrolls" mobile games.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In late 2018, Bethesda announced and released its first massively multiplayer online game, "Fallout 76", a prequel to the "Fallout" series. Upon its initial release, it was given mixed reviews for its poor quality and was embroiled in several other controversies, including problems with tie-in products and a data breach.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: The following year saw Bethesda announce sequels to "Rage" and "Doom", "Rage 2" and "Doom Eternal". The former was released on May 14.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In November 2019, Human Head Studios shut down while Bethesda established a new studio, Roundhouse Studios, offering all Human Head employees a position within it.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In 2001, Bethesda Softworks published "Echelon" in the United States, a video game developed by the Russian development studio Madia. Madia stated that Bethesda did not pay for boxed sales of the game, as was allegedly specified in the contract. The developers at Madia wrote an open letter to Bethesda in which they have detailed the affair, but Bethesda refused to pay. In the end Madia decided not to take it to court. Pete Hines, VP of PR at Bethesda, stated that Madia presented misleading allegations about Bethesda's role as publisher of "Echelon" in North America and that Bethesda had no contractual obligations to Madia.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: Bethesda Softworks and ZeniMax Media have been accused of attempting a hostile acquisition of Human Head Studios, as well as a successful hostile acquisition of Arkane Studios prior to that. According to a report from IGN, ZeniMax started purposefully failing Human Head's project milestones so that they would not get paid, allowing ZeniMax to buy the company at a reduced rate. They were accused of doing the same thing with Arkane Studios, although in Arkane's case the studio gave in and allowed themselves to be bought. The failed hostile acquisition of Human Head Studios led to cancellation of Human Head's "Prey 2", according to the report.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: Bethesda also pressured developer No Matter Games to change the name of their game "Prey for the Gods" to "Praey for the Gods", as Bethesda felt the initial title infringed upon the trademark of their own game, "Prey". Pete Hines, who serves as Bethesda's VP of marketing, said Bethesda would have risked losing their "Prey" trademark if they had not requested the title change.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In September 2009, Bethesda Softworks sued Interplay Entertainment over "Fallout" trademark infringement. After a lengthy legal battle the lawsuit was settled in January 2012, with Interplay receiving while Bethesda Softworks gained the right to develop a "Fallout" massively multiplayer online game, as well as the rights to "Fallout", "Fallout 2" and "Fallout Tactics" after December 31, 2013.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In September 2011, Bethesda's parent company, ZeniMax Media, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, claiming that Mojang's planned trademark of the title "Scrolls" infringed upon Bethesda's trademark of "The Elder Scrolls" series. On October 18, Markus Persson announced that Mojang had won the interim injunction, but that Bethesda still had the option to file an appeal. In March 2012, Mojang and Bethesda reached a settlement, in which Mojang would not trademark Scrolls, but Bethesda would not contest Mojang's naming of "Scrolls", so long as it would not be a direct competitor against "The Elder Scrolls".


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: In 2018, Bethesda Softworks sued Behaviour Interactive, the company responsible for developing "Fallout Shelter", for appearing to copy the game's design onto a tie-in mobile game for the "Westworld" franchise. The issue was settled with undisclosed terms, allowing Bethesda to drop the lawsuit.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: Bethesda came under fire in 2018 following the release of "Fallout 76", which was met with generally unfavorable reviews for its numerous bugs and glitches, gameplay design, and absence of human non-player characters (NPCs). Additionally, the game's special edition received criticism from buyers for advertising the inclusion of a canvas duffel bag, for which Bethesda ultimately substituted a nylon bag. In response, Bethesda initially stated that they would not take any remedial action. After further backlash from fans and customers, Bethesda stated that the bag had been altered "due to unavailability of materials" and compensated customers by offering free in-game currency equating to $5.00. Bethesda's actions provoked negative reactions from buyers for the publisher having failed to notify them beforehand and for the amount of compensation offered. Critics also noted that Bethesda's official website had only changed the description of the bag from "canvas" to "nylon" following customer complaints, while the promotional image of the special edition continued to label the bag as "canvas". Fans were further angered when it was revealed that a different canvas bag had been given by Bethesda to online influencers.


title: Bethesda Softworks

text: On December 3, 2018, Bethesda revealed that they would produce canvas bags for owners of the Power Armor edition. On December 5, 2018, customers who had submitted support tickets in order to receive the canvas bag had their personal information revealed as a result of a data breach in Bethesda's support system, exposing ticket details to viewing and editing by other users. Bethesda announced that the breach occurred as a result of "an error with our customer support website" and they would investigate the incident. The publisher also explained that the only details leaked would have been those that the support site had requested, rather than any credit card numbers or passwords. Customers reported having received their canvas bags by June 2019.


title: Daniel Moder

text: Daniel Richard Moder (born January 31, 1969) is an American cinematographer who has made such films as "Secret in Their Eyes", "The Mexican", and "Fireflies in the Garden". He is married to actress Julia Roberts. He received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his cinematography in the television film "The Normal Heart".


title: Daniel Moder

text: Moder began his career as a production assistant in the 1995 action film "Crimson Tide". The following year, he worked on the set of the 1996 sports drama film "The Fan". From then, he worked in the Camera and Electrical Department on films like "The Brave", "Enemy of the State", "The Big Tease", and "Tuesdays with Morrie". He made his debut as a cinematographer in the short comedy film "Kid Quick". As a cinematographer, he has since worked on films like "Grand Champion", "|Border", "The Hit", "Fireflies in the Garden", "Jesus Henry Christ", "Highland Park", "Plush", "The Normal Heart", and "Secret in Their Eyes". Moder has also worked on a number of short films as a cinematographer. He has also worked on "The Mexican", "Full Frontal", "Mona Lisa Smile", "Mr. & Mrs. Smith", "Friends with Money", and "Spider-Man 3".


title: Daniel Moder

text: Moder was married to Vera Steimberg from 1997 to 2002. He met his second wife, actress Julia Roberts, on the set of her film "The Mexican" in 2000. After his divorce from Steimberg was finalized, he and Roberts wed on July 4, 2002, in a small ceremony at her ranch in Taos, New Mexico. They have three children.


title: Project management

text: Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time, and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives.


title: Project management

text: The objective of project management is to produce a complete project which complies with the client's objectives. In many cases, the objective of project management is also to shape or reform the client's brief to feasibly address the client's objectives. Once the client's objectives are clearly established, they should influence all decisions made by other people involved in the project – for example, project managers, designers, contractors, and subcontractors. Ill-defined or too tightly prescribed project management objectives are detrimental to decision-making.


title: Project management

text: A project is a temporary and unique endeavor designed to produce a product, service, or result with a defined beginning and end (usually time-constrained, and often constrained by funding or staffing) undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value. The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast with business as usual (or operations), which are repetitive, permanent, or semi-permanent functional activities to produce products or services. In practice, the management of such distinct production approaches requires the development of distinct technical skills and management strategies.


title: Project management

text: Until 1900, civil engineering projects were generally managed by creative architects, engineers, and master builders themselves, for example, Vitruvius (first century BC), Christopher Wren (1632–1723), Thomas Telford (1757–1834), and Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859). In the 1950s, organizations started to systematically apply project-management tools and techniques to complex engineering projects.


title: Project management

text: As a discipline, project management developed from several fields of application including civil construction, engineering, and heavy defense activity. Two forefathers of project management are Henry Gantt, called the father of planning and control techniques, who is famous for his use of the Gantt chart as a project management tool (alternatively "Harmonogram" first proposed by Karol Adamiecki); and Henri Fayol for his creation of the five management functions that form the foundation of the body of knowledge associated with project and program management. Both Gantt and Fayol were students of Frederick Winslow Taylor's theories of scientific management. His work is the forerunner to modern project management tools including work breakdown structure (WBS) and resource allocation.


title: Project management

text: The 1950s marked the beginning of the modern project management era, where core engineering fields came together to work as one. Project management became recognized as a distinct discipline arising from the management discipline with the engineering model. In the United States, prior to the 1950s, projects were managed on an ad-hoc basis, using mostly Gantt charts and informal techniques and tools. At that time, two mathematical project-scheduling models were developed. The "critical path method" (CPM) was developed as a joint venture between DuPont Corporation and Remington Rand Corporation for managing plant maintenance projects. The "program evaluation and review technique" (PERT), was developed by the U.S. Navy Special Projects Office in conjunction with the Lockheed Corporation and Booz Allen Hamilton as part of the Polaris missile submarine program.


title: Project management

text: PERT and CPM are very similar in their approach but still present some differences. CPM is used for projects that assume deterministic activity times; the times at which each activity will be carried out are known. PERT, on the other hand, allows for stochastic activity times; the times at which each activity will be carried out are uncertain or varied. Because of this core difference, CPM and PERT are used in different contexts. These mathematical techniques quickly spread into many private enterprises.


title: Project management

text: At the same time, as project-scheduling models were being developed, technology for project cost estimating, cost management and engineering economics was evolving, with pioneering work by Hans Lang and others. In 1956, the American Association of Cost Engineers (now AACE International; the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering) was formed by early practitioners of project management and the associated specialties of planning and scheduling, cost estimating, and cost/schedule control (project control). AACE continued its pioneering work and in 2006, released the first integrated process for portfolio, program, and project management (total cost management framework).


title: Project management

text: In 1969, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was formed in the USA. PMI publishes the original version of "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge" (PMBOK Guide) in 1996 with William Duncan as its primary author, which describes project management practices that are common to "most projects, most of the time."


title: Project management

text: Project management methods can be applied to any project. It is often tailored to a specific type of project based on project size, nature, industry or sector. For example, the construction industry, which focuses on the delivery of things like buildings, roads, and bridges, has developed its own specialized form of project management that it refers to as "construction project management" and in which project managers can become trained and certified. The information technology industry has also evolved to develop its own form of project management that is referred to as "IT project management" and which specializes in the delivery of technical assets and services that are required to pass through various lifecycle phases such as planning, design, development, testing, and deployment. "Biotechnology project management" focuses on the intricacies of biotechnology research and development. "Localization project management" includes application of many standard project management practices to translation works even though many consider this type of management to be a very different discipline. There is public project management that covers all public works by the government, which can be carried out by the government agencies or contracted out to contractors. Another classification of project management is based on the hard (physical) or soft (non-physical) type.


title: Project management

text: Common among all the project management types is that they focus on three important goals: time, quality, and cost. Successful projects are completed on schedule, within budget, and according to previously agreed quality standards i.e. meeting the Iron Triangle or Triple Constraint in order for projects to be considered a success or failure.


title: Project management

text: For each type of project management, project managers develop and utilize repeatable templates that are specific to the industry they're dealing with. This allows project plans to become very thorough and highly repeatable, with the specific intent to increase quality, lower delivery costs, and lower time to deliver project results.


title: Project management

text: A 2017 study suggested that the success of any project depends on how well four key aspects are aligned with the contextual dynamics affecting the project, these are referred to as the "four P's":


title: Project management

text: There are a number of approaches to organizing and completing project activities, including phased, lean, iterative, and incremental. There are also several extensions to project planning, for example, based on outcomes (product-based) or activities (process-based).


title: Project management

text: Regardless of the methodology employed, careful consideration must be given to the overall project objectives, timeline, and cost, as well as the roles and responsibilities of all participants and stakeholders.


title: Project management

text: Benefits realization management (BRM) enhances normal project management techniques through a focus on outcomes (benefits) of a project rather than products or outputs and then measuring the degree to which that is happening to keep a project on track. This can help to reduce the risk of a completed project being a failure by delivering agreed upon requirements (outputs) i.e. project success but failing to deliver the benefits (outcomes) of those requirements i.e. product success. Note that good requirements management will ensure these benefits are captured as requirements of the project and their achievement monitored throughout the project.


title: Project management

text: In addition, BRM practices aim to ensure the strategic alignment between project outcomes and business strategies. The effectiveness of these practices is supported by recent research evidencing BRM practices influencing project success from a strategic perspective across different countries and industries. These wider effects are called the strategic impact.


title: Project management

text: An example of delivering a project to requirements might be agreeing to deliver a computer system that will process staff data and manage payroll, holiday, and staff personnel records in shorter times with reduced errors. Under BRM, the agreement might be to achieve a specified reduction in staff hours and errors required to process and maintain staff data after the system installation when compared without the system.


title: Project management

text: Critical path method (CPM) is an algorithm for determining the schedule for project activities. It is the traditional process used for predictive-based project planning. The CPM method evaluates the sequence of activities, the work effort required, the inter-dependencies, and the resulting float time per line sequence to determine the required project duration. Thus, by definition, the critical path is the pathway of tasks on the network diagram that has no extra time available (or very little extra time)."


title: Project management

text: Critical chain project management (CCPM) is an application of the theory of constraints (TOC) to planning and managing projects and is designed to deal with the uncertainties inherent in managing projects, while taking into consideration the limited availability of resources (physical, human skills, as well as management & support capacity) needed to execute projects.


title: Project management

text: The goal is to increase the flow of projects in an organization (throughput). Applying the first three of the five focusing steps of TOC, the system constraint for all projects, as well as the resources, are identified. To exploit the constraint, tasks on the critical chain are given priority over all other activities.


title: Project management

text: Earned value management (EVM) extends project management with techniques to improve project monitoring. It illustrates project progress towards completion in terms of work and value (cost). Earned Schedule is an extension to the theory and practice of EVM.


title: Project management

text: In critical studies of project management, it has been noted that phased approaches are not well suited for projects which are large-scale and multi-company, with undefined, ambiguous, or fast-changing requirements, or those with high degrees of risk, dependency, and fast-changing technologies. The cone of uncertainty explains some of this as the planning made on the initial phase of the project suffers from a high degree of uncertainty. This becomes especially true as software development is often the realization of a new or novel product.


title: Project management

text: These complexities are better handled with a more exploratory or iterative and incremental approach. Several models of iterative and incremental project management have evolved, including agile project management, dynamic systems development method, extreme project management, and Innovation Engineering®.


title: Project management

text: Lean project management uses the principles from lean manufacturing to focus on delivering value with less waste and reduced time.


title: Project management

text: There are five phases to a project lifecycle; known as process groups. Each process group represents a series of inter-related processes to manage the work through a series of distinct steps to be completed. This type of project approach is often referred to as "traditional" or "waterfall". The five process groups are:


title: Project management

text: Some industries may use variations of these project stages and rename them to better suit the organization. For example, when working on a brick-and-mortar design and construction, projects will typically progress through stages like pre-planning, conceptual design, schematic design, design development, construction drawings (or contract documents), and construction administration.


title: Project management

text: While the phased approach works well for small, well-defined projects, it often results in challenge or failure on larger projects, or those that are more complex or have more ambiguities, issues, and risks - see the parodying 'six phases of a big project'.


title: Project management

text: The incorporation of process-based management has been driven by the use of maturity models such as the OPM3 and the CMMI (capability maturity model integration; see


title: Project management

text: Project production management is the application of operations management to the delivery of capital projects. The Project production management framework is based on a project as a production system view, in which a project transforms inputs (raw materials, information, labor, plant & machinery) into outputs (goods and services).


title: Project management

text: Product-based planning is a structured approach to project management, based on identifying all of the products (project deliverables) that contribute to achieving the project objectives. As such, it defines a successful project as output-oriented rather than activity- or task-oriented. The most common implementation of this approach is PRINCE2.


title: Project management

text: Traditionally (depending on what project management methodology is being used), project management includes a number of elements: four to five project management process groups, and a control system. Regardless of the methodology or terminology used, the same basic project management processes or stages of development will be used. Major process groups generally include:


title: Project management

text: In project environments with a significant exploratory element (e.g., research and development), these stages may be supplemented with decision points (go/no go decisions) at which the project's continuation is debated and decided. An example is the Phase–gate model.


title: Project management

text: The initiating processes determine the nature and scope of the project. If this stage is not performed well, it is unlikely that the project will be successful in meeting the business’ needs. The key project controls needed here are an understanding of the business environment and making sure that all necessary controls are incorporated into the project. Any deficiencies should be reported and a recommendation should be made to fix them.


title: Project management

text: The initiating stage should include a plan that encompasses the following areas. These areas can be recorded in a series of documents called Project Initiation documents.


title: Project management

text: Project Initiation documents are a series of planned documents used to create an order for the duration of the project.


title: Project management

text: After the initiation stage, the project is planned to an appropriate level of detail (see an ). The main purpose is to plan time, cost, and resources adequately to estimate the work needed and to effectively manage risk during project execution. As with the Initiation process group, a failure to adequately plan greatly reduces the project's chances of successfully accomplishing its goals.


title: Project management

text: Additional processes, such as planning for communications and for scope management, identifying roles and responsibilities, determining what to purchase for the project, and holding a kick-off meeting are also generally advisable.


title: Project management

text: For new product development projects, conceptual design of the operation of the final product may be performed concurrent with the project planning activities and may help to inform the planning team when identifying deliverables and planning activities.


title: Project management

text: The execution/implementation phase ensures that the project management plan's deliverables are executed accordingly. This phase involves proper allocation, coordination, and management of human resources and any other resources such as materials and budgets. The output of this phase is the project deliverables.


title: Project management

text: Documenting everything within a project is key to being successful. To maintain budget, scope, effectiveness and pace a project must have physical documents pertaining to each specific task. With correct documentation, it is easy to see whether or not a project's requirement has been met. To go along with that, documentation provides information regarding what has already been completed for that project. Documentation throughout a project provides a paper trail for anyone who needs to go back and reference the work in the past.


title: Project management

text: In most cases, documentation is the most successful way to monitor and control the specific phases of a project. With the correct documentation, a project's success can be tracked and observed as the project goes on. If performed correctly documentation can be the backbone of a project's success


title: Project management

text: Monitoring and controlling consist of those processes performed to observe project execution so that potential problems can be identified in a timely manner and corrective action can be taken, when necessary, to control the execution of the project. The key benefit is that project performance is observed and measured regularly to identify variances from the project management plan.


title: Project management

text: Two main mechanisms support monitoring and controlling in projects. On the one hand, contracts offer a set of rules and incentives often supported by potential penalties and sanctions. On the other hand, scholars in business and management have paid attention to the role of integrators (also called project barons) to achieve a project's objectives. In turn, recent research in project management has questioned the type of interplay between contracts and integrators. Some have argued that these two monitoring mechanisms operate as substitutes as one type of organization would decrease the advantages of using the other one.


title: Project management

text: In multi-phase projects, the monitoring and control process also provides feedback between project phases, to implement corrective or preventive actions to bring the project into compliance with the project management plan.


title: Project management

text: In this stage, auditors should pay attention to how effectively and quickly user problems are resolved.


title: Project management

text: Over the course of any construction project, the work scope may change. Change is a normal and expected part of the construction process. Changes can be the result of necessary design modifications, differing site conditions, material availability, contractor-requested changes, value engineering, and impacts from third parties, to name a few. Beyond executing the change in the field, the change normally needs to be documented to show what was actually constructed. This is referred to as change management. Hence, the owner usually requires a final record to show all changes or, more specifically, any change that modifies the tangible portions of the finished work. The record is made on the contract documents – usually, but not necessarily limited to, the design drawings. The end product of this effort is what the industry terms as-built drawings, or more simply, "as built." The requirement for providing them is a norm in construction contracts. Construction document management is a highly important task undertaken with the aid of an online or desktop software system or maintained through physical documentation. The increasing legality pertaining to the construction industry's maintenance of correct documentation has caused an increase in the need for document management systems.


title: Project management

text: When changes are introduced to the project, the viability of the project has to be re-assessed. It is important not to lose sight of the initial goals and targets of the projects. When the changes accumulate, the forecasted result may not justify the original proposed investment in the project. Successful project management identifies these components, and tracks and monitors progress, so as to stay within time and budget frames already outlined at the commencement of the project. Exact methods were suggested to identify the most informative monitoring points along the project life-cycle regarding its progress and expected duration.


title: Project management

text: Closing includes the formal acceptance of the project and the ending thereof. Administrative activities include the archiving of the files and documenting lessons learned.


title: Project management

text: Also included in this phase is the Post Implementation Review. This is a vital phase of the project for the project team to learn from experiences and apply to future projects. Normally a Post Implementation Review consists of looking at things that went well and analyzing things that went badly on the project to come up with lessons learned.


title: Project management

text: should be established as an independent function in project management. It implements verification and controlling functions during the processing of a project to reinforce the defined performance and formal goals. The tasks of project control are also:


title: Project management

text: Fulfillment and implementation of these tasks can be achieved by applying specific methods and instruments of project control. The following methods of project control can be applied:


title: Project management

text: Project control is that element of a project that keeps it on track, on time, and within budget. Project control begins early in the project with planning and ends late in the project with post-implementation review, having a thorough involvement of each step in the process. Projects may be audited or reviewed while the project is in progress. Formal audits are generally risk or compliance-based and management will direct the objectives of the audit. An examination may include a comparison of approved project management processes with how the project is actually being managed. Each project should be assessed for the appropriate level of control needed: too much control is too time-consuming, too little control is very risky. If project control is not implemented correctly, the cost to the business should be clarified in terms of errors and fixes.


title: Project management

text: Control systems are needed for cost, risk, quality, communication, time, change, procurement, and human resources. In addition, auditors should consider how important the projects are to the financial statements, how reliant the stakeholders are on controls, and how many controls exist. Auditors should review the development process and procedures for how they are implemented. The process of development and the quality of the final product may also be assessed if needed or requested. A business may want the auditing firm to be involved throughout the process to catch problems earlier on so that they can be fixed more easily. An auditor can serve as a controls consultant as part of the development team or as an independent auditor as part of an audit.


title: Project management

text: Businesses sometimes use formal systems development processes. This help assure systems are developed successfully. A formal process is more effective in creating strong controls, and auditors should review this process to confirm that it is well designed and is followed in practice. A good formal systems development plan outlines:


title: Project management

text: Complexity and its nature play an important role in the area of project management. Despite having a number of debates on this subject matter, studies suggest a lack of definition and reasonable understanding of complexity in relation to the management of complex projects.


title: Project management

text: Project complexity is the property of a project which makes it difficult to understand, foresee, and keep under control its overall behavior, even when given reasonably complete information about the project system.


title: Project management

text: The identification of complex projects is specifically important to multi-project engineering environments.


title: Project management

text: As it is considered that project complexity and project performance are closely related, it is important to define and measure the complexity of the project for project management to be effective.


title: Project management

text: By applying the discovery in measuring work complexity described in Requisite Organization and Stratified Systems Theory, Dr. Elliott Jaques classifies projects and project work (stages, tasks) into basic 7 levels of project complexity based on such criteria as time-span of discretion and complexity of a project's output:


title: Project management

text: Similarly with the Law of requisite variety and The law of requisite complexity, project complexity is sometimes required in order for the project to reach its objectives, and sometimes it has beneficial outcomes. Based on the effects of complexity, Stefan Morcov proposed its classification as Positive, Appropriate, or Negative.


title: Project management

text: A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers are in charge of the people in a project. People are the key to any successful project. Without the correct people in the right place and at the right time a project cannot be successful. Project managers can have the responsibility of the planning, execution, controlling, and closing of any project typically relating to the construction industry, engineering, architecture, computing, and telecommunications. Many other fields of production engineering, design engineering, and heavy industrial have project managers.


title: Project management

text: A project manager needs to understand the order of execution of a project to schedule the project correctly as well as the time necessary to accomplish each individual task within the project. A project manager is the person accountable for accomplishing the stated project objectives on behalf of the client. Project Managers tend to have multiple years’ experience in their field. A project manager is required to know the project in and out while supervising the workers along with the project. Typically in most construction, engineering, architecture, and industrial projects, a project manager has another manager working alongside of them who is typically responsible for the execution of task on a daily basis. This position in some cases is known as a superintendent. A superintendent and project manager work hand in hand in completing daily project task. Key project management responsibilities include creating clear and attainable project objectives, building the project requirements, and managing the triple constraint (now including more constraints and calling it competing constraints) for projects, which is cost, time, quality and scope for the first three but about three additional ones in current project management. A typical project is composed of a team of workers who work under the project manager to complete the assignment within the time and budget targets. A project manager normally reports directly to someone of higher stature on the completion and success of the project.


title: Project management

text: A project manager is often a client representative and has to determine and implement the exact needs of the client, based on knowledge of the firm they are representing. The ability to adapt to the various internal procedures of the contracting party, and to form close links with the nominated representatives, is essential in ensuring that the key issues of cost, time, quality and above all, client satisfaction, can be realized.


title: Project management

text: A complete project manager, a term first coined by Dr. Robert J. Graham in his simulation, has been expanded upon by Randall L. Englund and Alfonso Bucero. They describe a complete project manager as a person who embraces multiple disciplines, such as leadership, influence, negotiations, politics, change and conflict management, and humor. These are all "soft" people skills that enable project leaders to be more effective and achieve optimized, consistent results.


title: Project management

text: There is a tendency to confuse the project success with project management success. They are two different things.


title: Project management

text: Project management success criteria are different from project success criteria. The project management is said to be successful if the given project is completed within the agreed upon time, met the agreed upon scope and within the agreed upon budget. Subsequent to the triple constraints, multiple constraints have been considered to ensure project success. However, the triple or multiple constraints indicate only the efficiency measures of the project, which are indeed the project management success criteria during the project lifecycle.


title: Project management

text: The priori criteria leave out the more important after-completion results of the project which comprise four levels i.e. the output (product) success, outcome (benefits) success and impact (strategic) success during the product lifecycle. These posterior success criteria indicate the effectiveness measures of the project product, service or result, after the project completion and handover. This overarching multilevel success framework of projects, programs and portfolios has been developed by Paul Bannerman in 2008. In other words, a project is said to be successful, when it succeeds in achieving the expected business case which needs to be clearly identified and defined during the project inception and selection before starting the development phase. This multilevel success framework conforms to the theory of project as a transformation depicted as the input-process / activity-output-outcome-impact in order to generate whatever value intended.


title: Project management

text: Emanuel Camilleri in 2011 classifies all the critical success and failure factors into groups and matches each of them with the multilevel success criteria in order to deliver business value.


title: Project management

text: The United States Department of Defense states; "Cost, Schedule, Performance, and Risk" are the four elements through which Department of Defense acquisition professionals make trade-offs and track program status. There are also international standards. Risk management applies proactive identification (see tools) of future problems and understanding of their consequences allowing predictive decisions about projects. ERM system plays a role in overall risk management.


title: Project management

text: The work breakdown structure (WBS) is a tree structure that shows a subdivision of the activities required to achieve an objective – for example a portfolio, program, project, and contract. The WBS may be hardware-, product-, service-, or process-oriented (see an example in a ). Beside WBS for project scope management, there are organizational breakdown structure (chart), cost breakdown structure and risk breakdown structure.


title: Project management

text: A WBS can be developed by starting with the end objective and successively subdividing it into manageable components in terms of size, duration, and responsibility (e.g., systems, subsystems, components, tasks, sub-tasks, and work packages), which include all steps necessary to achieve the objective.


title: Project management

text: The work breakdown structure provides a common framework for the natural development of the overall planning and control of a contract and is the basis for dividing work into definable increments from which the statement of work can be developed and technical, schedule, cost, and labor hour reporting can be established.


title: Project management

text: The work breakdown structure can be displayed in two forms, as a table with subdivision of tasks or as an organizational chart whose lowest nodes are referred to as "work packages".


title: Project management

text: It is an essential element in assessing the quality of a plan, and an initial element used during the planning of the project. For example, a WBS is used when the project is scheduled, so that the use of work packages can be recorded and tracked.


title: Project management

text: Similarly to Work Breakdown Structure WBS, other decomposition techniques and tools are: Organization Breakdown Structure OBS, Product Breakdown Structure PBS, Cost Breakdown Structure CBS, Risk Breakdown Structure RBS, Resource Breakdown Structure ResBS.


title: Project management

text: Programs are collections of projects that support a common objective and set of goals. While individual projects have clearly defined and specific scope and timeline, a program’s objectives and duration are defined with a lower level of granularity.


title: Project management

text: Besides programs and portfolios, additional structures that combine their different characteristics are: project networks, mega-projects, or mega-programs.


title: Project management

text: A project network is a temporary project formed of several different distinct evolving phases, crossing organizational lines.


title: Project management

text: Mega-projects and mega-programs are defined as exceptional in terms of size, cost, public and political attention, and competencies required.


title: Project management

text: An increasing number of organizations are using what is referred to as project portfolio management (PPM) as a means of selecting the right projects and then using project management techniques as the means for delivering the outcomes in the form of benefits to the performing public, private or not-for-profit organization.


title: Project management

text: Portfolios are collections of similar projects. Portfolio management supports efficiencies of scale, increasing success rates, and reducing project risks, by applying similar standardized techniques to all projects in the portfolio, by a group of project management professionals sharing common tools and knowledge.


title: Project management

text: Organizations often create Project Management Offices as an organizational structure to support project portfolio management in a structured way.


title: Project management

text: Thus, PPM is usually performed by a dedicated team of managers organized within an Enterprise Project Management Office (PMO), usually based within the organization, and headed by a PMO director or Chief Project Officer. In cases where strategic initiatives of an organization form the bulk of the PPM, the head of the PPM is sometimes titled as the chief initiative officer.


title: Project management

text: Project management software is software used to help plan, organize, and manage resource pools, develop resource estimates and implement plans. Depending on the sophistication of the software, functionality may include estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control and budget management, resource allocation, collaboration software, communication, decision-making, workflow, risk, quality, documentation, and/or administration systems.


title: Project management

text: Virtual program management (VPM) is management of a project done by a virtual team, though it rarely may refer to a project implementing a virtual environment It is noted that managing a virtual project is fundamentally different from managing traditional projects, combining concerns of remote work and global collaboration (culture, time zones, language).


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Jeffrey Garlin (born June 5, 1962) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He is best known for playing Murray Goldberg, patriarch of the eponymous family in the ABC sitcom "The Goldbergs", and Jeff Greene on the HBO sitcom "Curb Your Enthusiasm". He also played Marvin on "Mad About You" and Mort Meyers on "Arrested Development" for Fox and Netflix.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: He has also appeared in "ParaNorman", "WALL-E", "Toy Story 3", and "Safety Not Guaranteed", among other films.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Garlin was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Gene and Carole (née Crafton) Garlin. He grew up in Morton Grove, Illinois, where his father owned a plumbing supply business called Bilko and his mother was active in community theater. He has a younger brother, Michael. Garlin is Jewish and attended Hebrew school.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Garlin says he has wanted to be a comedian since the age of eight, when he saw Jimmy Durante perform in Chicago. Garlin attended Melzer Elementary School in Morton Grove, Illinois. He enjoyed playing sports at school, but had to stop after being diagnosed with Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome, a heart ailment.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: When Garlin was in sixth grade, his father sold his supply business and the family relocated to South Florida. He graduated from Nova High School in Davie, Florida, in 1980. He attended Broward Community College, followed by an aborted stint studying film at the University of Miami, where he first began to perform stand-up comedy.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: In 1984, aged 22, Garlin moved back to Chicago to pursue a stand-up comedy career. He performed with the comedy troupe The Second City. He worked in the box office with Stephen Colbert.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: While living in Wrigleyville, Chicago during the 1980s, Garlin was briefly roommates with Conan O'Brien, who was then a comedy writer. He remains close to O'Brien, and after O'Brien was removed as host of "The Tonight Show" in 2010 so that Jay Leno could return, Garlin stated that he would not be a guest on the show again.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Garlin was hired by comedians Denis Leary and Jon Stewart to help develop their specials. He worked as a stage director for their shows and edited the scripts. He worked with Larry David in this same way. He continues to do standup, where he says he improvises a lot on stage, and feels very relaxed, "maybe too relaxed."


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Garlin has a variety of television and film appearances to his credit, as an actor and a stand up, including "Dr. Katz", "Arrested Development", "Everybody Loves Raymond", "Late Show with David Letterman", "Tom Goes to the Mayor", "The Life and Times of Tim", "The Daily Show", "Late Night with Conan O'Brien", and "Entourage".


title: Jeff Garlin

text: From 1997 to 1999, Garlin spent three seasons on NBC's "Mad About You" in the role of Marvin. He co-starred and executive produced the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm". He had a recurring role on the series "Wizards of Waverly Place" as Uncle Kelbo, appearing in three episodes over the first three seasons.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Nine years after making an uncredited début as Gut Gut in "Spring Break" (1983), Garlin earned his first film credit in 1992, in Dolly Parton's comedy "Straight Talk". He had a small role in "RoboCop 3" as "Donut Jerk" after a member of the casting crew witnessed Garlin eating a doughnut while leaving Krispy Kreme with an additional two dozen doughnuts. He also had a cameo appearance in "" in 1999.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Other cameo appearances include "Run Ronnie Run!", "After the Sunset", "Fat Albert", and "Sleepover". He appeared in Steven Soderbergh's "Full Frontal" (2002) and with Eddie Murphy in "Daddy Day Care" (2003). In 2005, he had a small role in "Fun with Dick and Jane".


title: Jeff Garlin

text: In 2008, Garlin appeared in "The Rocker" as Stan, and also played Ed Lawson in "Strange Wilderness". He lent his voice to the Disney/Pixar films "Toy Story 3" and "Toy Story 4", as Buttercup. He appeared as Sid, alongside Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler, in the 2010 comedy action film "The Bounty Hunter". He played Ed Burch in "Laggies", released in 2014.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: His feature directorial debut, "I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With" (which he also wrote), premiered to favorable reviews at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. It opened in September 2007. The film co-starred Sarah Silverman and Bonnie Hunt.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: In 2006, Garlin directed "This Filthy World", a one-man show performed by director John Waters. He was a voice actor in "WALL-E", an animated film by Pixar that was released June 27, 2008, as B. McCrea, the Captain of the "Axiom" spaceship. Garlin executive produced the documentary "Finding Vivian Maier" (2013).


title: Jeff Garlin

text: In 2013, Garlin signed onto the ABC sitcom "The Goldbergs", which premiered September 24, 2013. He would play Murray Goldberg, the father of the title family. However, in December 2021, as shooting neared completion for the show's ninth season, Garlin exited the series, following misconduct allegations and investigations by the show's human resources department, initially reported in November 2019. For the remainder of the season, Garlin's character continued to appear on the show, portrayed via the use of outtakes, a stand-in, and CGI.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: In July 2013, Garlin directed his second film, "Dealin' with Idiots", which was inspired by his experiences with his two sons in Little League. The entire movie was improvised.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: In October 2019, Garlin revealed he would have a role in "", the final installment of the "Star Wars" saga, which was released on December 20, 2019. He played Junn Gobint.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: On February 23, 2010, Garlin released a book, "My Footprint: Carrying the Weight of the World", a memoir which documents his journey to lessen both his physical and carbon footprint.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: On the comedy podcast network Earwolf Garlin hosted a show, called "By the Way, In Conversation with Jeff Garlin", which consisted of unscripted talks rather than formal interviews. The debut episode featured Garlin's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" co-star Larry David. The twice monthly installments were recorded in front of a live audience at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles. The last episode of the podcast was released in February 2015.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: In March 2018, Garlin was one of the actors who voiced the audiobook "A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo".


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Katie Puckrik in "The Guardian" writes, “British comedy is a touchstone for Garlin”, with Garlin stating, “Monty Python changed my life. I watched the original Office. I love "The Mighty Boosh" and "The Goon Show". I'm a fanatic about Ealing comedies. And "Fawlty Towers" is probably my favorite thing that I've ever seen come out of England.”


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Garlin married Marla Beth Cahan on July 24, 1994. The couple have two sons, James (b. 1996) and Duke (b. 2000). In September 2018, the couple announced their intention to divorce after 24 years of marriage. In March 2020, Garlin stated that he and Cahan were at the end of their divorce proceedings.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Garlin is a fan of the Chicago Cubs. Every year on his birthday, he attends a game with his friend Kevin Cronin, lead singer of REO Speedwagon.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Garlin practices transcendental meditation, which he does twice a day. He says it has helped him with symptoms of ADHD.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: For a few years, Garlin lived with talk-show host Conan O'Brien. O'Brien has said that sometimes Garlin woke him up in the middle of the night and made him perform skits.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Garlin announced on September 22, 2022 that he has been struggling with bipolar disorder, with the following caption "Bipolar is a mother f*****. Sometimes it’s just too much to deal with. I’m doing the best I can. This the first time that I’ve opened up about this."


title: Jeff Garlin

text: When he was in his late 20s, Garlin had surgery in Oklahoma City to correct a heart condition called Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome, which is a defect in an accessory electrical conduction pathway in the heart that results in tachycardia. Garlin said he was an early recipient (#72) of the surgery, which millions of people have since undergone.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: In February 2000, before filming began on "Curb Your Enthusiasm", he had a stroke at the age of 37. During the early episodes of Season One, he had noticeably slurred speech that later improved. In addition to epilepsy and attention deficit disorder, he also has type II diabetes, which he controls with diet and exercise.


title: Jeff Garlin

text: Garlin has written about his problems with food and has discussed his weight problems publicly. In an October 2011 interview, Garlin said: "I think people look at fat people as having a lack of willpower when willpower has nothing to do with it. I didn’t change my life until I approached everything like an addict. I haven’t had sweets in almost three years because I know if I have one cookie, just like if an alcoholic has his first drink, I’m off to the races and I’m back eating sugar again."


title: The Beatles: Get Back

text: The Beatles: Get Back is a 2021 documentary series directed and produced by Peter Jackson. It covers the making of the Beatles' 1970 album "Let It Be" (which had the working title of "Get Back") and draws largely from unused footage and audio material originally captured for the 1970 documentary of the album by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. The docuseries has a total runtime of nearly eight hours, consisting of three episodes between two and three hours, each covering roughly weekly periods of 21 days of studio time.


title: The Beatles: Get Back

text: Also co-produced by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, the series is presented by Walt Disney Studios in association with Apple Corps and WingNut Films. It premiered with three consecutive daily releases on Disney+ beginning on 25 November 2021. A portion of it, titled "The Beatles: Get Back – The Rooftop Concert", was given a theatrical release in IMAX theatres across numerous US cities on 30 January 2022. It was then released internationally between 11 and 13 February 2022. "The Beatles: Get Back" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 12 July 2022.


title: The Beatles: Get Back

text: Jackson characterised the miniseries as "a documentary about a documentary". "Get Back" received critical acclaim for its coverage of the group's creative process, although detractors criticised the relatively long runtime. Commentators described it as challenging longtime beliefs that the making of the "Let It Be" album was marked entirely by tensions between the Beatles, instead showing a more upbeat side to its production.


title: The Beatles: Get Back

text: While visiting Apple Corps to discuss working on a potential Beatles exhibition featuring augmented or virtual reality, Peter Jackson asked Apple about the archival footage for the 1970 documentary of the album, which he was allowed access to for a potential new documentary. Jackson was hesitant to sign onto the project because of his fears about the long-reported acrimony surrounding the Beatles breakup. Upon viewing the footage, he later stated, he "was relieved to discover the reality is very different to the myth ... Sure, there's moments of drama – but none of the discord this project has long been associated with." Sixty hours of film footage, shot in January 1969, and over 150 hours of audio stemming from the original "Let It Be" film were made available to Jackson's team.


title: The Beatles: Get Back

text: Production of "The Beatles: Get Back" employed film restoration techniques developed for Jackson's "They Shall Not Grow Old". Jackson spent close to four years editing the series. It was created with cooperation from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows of John Lennon (Yoko Ono) and George Harrison (Olivia Harrison), as well as music supervisor Giles Martin (son of George Martin and a regular producer of Beatles projects since 2006). In a news release, McCartney said: "I am really happy that Peter has delved into our archives to make a film that shows the truth about the Beatles recording together", while Starr echoed: "There was hours and hours of us just laughing and playing music, not at all like the "Let It Be" film that came out [in 1970]. There was a lot of joy and I think Peter will show that."