Project Management Proverbs

This has been out on the net for years but came across it again today. The IT Project Management Proverbs I & II. Of these I liked the following the most:

• Any project can be estimated accurately (once it's completed).
• The most valuable and least used WORD in a project manager's vocabulary is "NO".
• The most valuable and least used PHRASE in a project manager's vocabulary is "I don't know".
• Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it.
• You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it.
• At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.
• Too few people on a project can't solve the problems - too many create more problems than they solve.
• A change freeze is like the abominable snowman: it is a myth and would anyway melt when heat is applied.
• A user is somebody who tells you what they want the day you give them what they asked for.
• What you don't know hurts you.
• A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well planned project only twice as long as expected.
• It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by nine women.
• Fast - cheap - good: you can have any two.
• Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when.
• If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.
• For a project manager overruns are as certain as death and taxes.
• Some projects finish on time in spite of project management best practices.
• Good project managers admit mistakes: that's why you so rarely meet a good project manager.
• There is such a thing as an unrealistic timescale. The more ridiculous the deadline the more money will be wasted trying to meet it.
• The first 90% of a project takes 10% of the time the last 10% takes the other 90%.
• The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale.
• To estimate a project, work out how long it would take one person to do it then multiply that by the number of people on the project.
• When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be considered complete.
• There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop - Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.
• If project content is allowed to change freely the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.
• If you can interpret project status data in several different ways, only the most painful interpretation will be correct.
• A project gets a year late one day at a time.
• If you're 6 months late on a milestone due next week but nevertheless really believe you can make it, you're a project manager.
• No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirement - yours won't be the first to.
• The first myth of management is that it exists.
• If an IT project works the first time, it is wrong.
• The person who says it will take the longest and cost the most is the only one with a clue how to do the job.
• Difficult projects are easy, impossible projects are difficult, miracles are a little trickier.

Category: Software Industry Project Management