The intent is to provide the lessons learned from the 2008 Democratic National Convention from a state-agency perspective with an emphasis on risk management and to provide a nexus between the challenges that project managers face on large-scale, high profile projects. The lessons learned for the 2008 Democratic National Convention include:

• Complexity of incorporating Project Management Institute's standards [business] into law enforcement [tactical] procedures using the Incident Command System (ICS) to ensure compliancy with the federal grant;
• Overcoming limited communications due to the level of security required to host a national security event;
• Not being the lead agency and thus having to ascribe to another agency's rules of engagement, e.g., beginning a project without having federal grant monies booked, no clear determination of spending authority, insurance procurement for the event, training, et cetera; and
• Risk management.