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Monday, March 13, 2006

More Project Management Sayings

It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by impregnating nine women (although it is more fun trying).

The same work under the same conditions will be estimated differently by ten different estimators or by one estimator at ten different times.

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.

If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the situatee.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.

Too few people on a project can't solve the problems - too many create more problems than they solve.

A problem shared is a buck passed.

A change freeze is like the abominable snowman: it is a myth and would anyway melt when heat is applied.

A user will tell you anything you ask about, but nothing more.

A user is somebody who tells you what they want the day you give them what they asked for.

Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is the correct one.

What you don't know hurts you.

The conditions attached to a promise are forgotten, only the promise is remembered.

There's never enough time to do it right first time but there's always enough time to go back and do it again.

The bitterness of poor quality last long after the sweetness of making a date is forgotten.

I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Estimators do it in groups - bottom up and top down.

If you're 6 months late on a milestone due next week but 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.

Activity is not achievement.

The first myth of management is that it exists.

Managing IT people is like herding cats.

If you don't know how to do a task, start it, then ten people who know less than you will tell you how to do it.

A minute saved at the start is just as effective as one saved at the end.

People under pressure do not think faster.

If an IT project works the first time, it is wrong.

If you don't plan, it doesn't work. If you do plan, it doesn't work either. Why plan!

Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal.

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.

Planning is an unnatural process, doing something is much more fun.

The nice thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.

Projects happen in two ways: a) Planned and then executed or b) Executed, stopped, planned and then executed.

It's not the hours that count, it's what you do in those hours.

Good control reveals problems early - which only means you'll have longer to worry about them.

If there is anything to do, do it!

If it can go wrong it will - Murphy's law.

If it can't possibly go wrong, it will - O'Malley's corollary to Murphy's law.

It will go wrong in the worst possible way - Sod's law.

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion - Parkinson's law.

Finely chopped cabbage in mayonnaise - Coleslaw.

A two year project will take three years, a three year project will never finish - (anyone know who's law this is?)

Murphy, O'Malley, Sod and Parkinson are alive and well - and working on your project.

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