Project Management Proverbs compiled and some written by Mike Harding Roberts

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.

Right answers to wrong questions are just as wrong as wrong answers to right questions.

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

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

Good estimators aren't modest: if it's huge they say so.

The sooner you begin coding the later you finish.

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.

Change is inevitable - except from vending machines.

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.

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

The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of meeting the date is forgotten.

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.

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

What is not on paper has not been said.

If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

If you fail to plan you are planning to fail.

If you don't attack the risks, the risks will attack you.

A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.

The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.

A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well planned project only twice as
long as expected.

If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven't understood the plan.

When all's said and done a lot more is said than done.
If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.

Never put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.

Feather and down are padding - changes and contingencies will be real events.

There are no good project managers - only lucky ones.

The more you plan the luckier you get.

Project Management
A project is one small step for the project sponsor, one giant leap for the project manager.

Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to
give and when.

If the project is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going terribly wrong.

Everyone asks for a strong project manager - when they get him they don't want him.

Overtime is a figment of the nave project manager's imagination.

Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance.

Good project managers know when not to manage a project.

All project managers face problems on Monday mornings - good project managers are working on next
Monday's problems.

Metrics are learned men's excuses.

For a project manager overruns are as certain as death and taxes.

If there were no problem people there'd be no need for people who solve problems.

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.
Fast - cheap - good: you can have any two.

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 90% 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.

Never underestimate the ability of senior management to buy a bad idea and fail to buy a good idea.

The most successful project managers have perfected the skill of being comfortable being uncomfortable.

You can build a reputation on what you're going to do.

When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be
considered complete.

If it happens once it's ignorance, if it happens twice it's neglect, if it happens three times it's policy.

Some things that don't count are counted, many things that count aren't counted.

If it wasn't for the 'last minute' nothing would get done.

Warning: dates in the calendar are closer than you think.

Furious activity does not necessarily equate to progress and is no substitute for understanding.

When you're up to your arse in alligators it's easy to forget you're there to drain the swamp.

There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.

Planning reduces uncertainty: you rule out at least one way the project could turn out.

If you have time to do it over again, you'll never get away with doing it right the first time.

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.

Projects don't all fail in the end, they fail at the beginning.

A project ain't over until the fat cheque is cashed.

Powerful project managers don't solve problems, they get rid of them.
No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirement - yours won't be the first to.

Meetings are events in which minutes are kept and hours are lost.

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.

Bad news does not improve with age and should be acted upon immediately.

People under pressure do not think faster.

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

There is no such thing as an IT project only business projects some of which happen to involve IT.

At some point in the project you're finally going to have to give in and define the requirements.

Man is so obsessed with his need for success that project disasters are usually just filed away (Om P
Kharanda).

The user does not know what he wants untill he gets it. Then he knows what he does NOT want.

We build systems like the Wright brothers built airplanes - build the whole thing, push it off a cliff, let it
crash and start all over again (R.M. Graham).

People make a plan work, a plan alone seldom makes people work (Confucius).

If you want to make God laugh have a definite plan.

The typical project sponsor would rather starts ten projects than complete one single project (Vrisou van
Eck).

If everything seems to be going well, you obviously don't know what's going on (Edward Murphy).

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

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.

No plan ever survived contact with the enemy.

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!

Project Management Laws

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.

If there is a 50% chance of something going wrong then 9 times out of 10 it will.

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.

Quotations

"We trained hard...but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be
reorganized...I was to learn later in life that we meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful
method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and
demoralisation."

Often attributed to Petronius Arbiter (c.27BC-66AD) but actually written by Charlton Ogburn Jr. in 1957.

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

Douglas Adams, more recently.

Bill Cosby

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana (1863-1952)

"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."

Samuel Johnson, 1759

The 7 Phases of a Project

1. Wild enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Confusion
4. Panic
5. Search for the guilty
6. Punishment of the innocent
7. Promotion of non-participants

Sayings

Tell me what you need and I'll tell you how you can get along without it.

If you are as confused as I am then you know as much as I do.

A lack of planning by you does not constitute an emergency for me.

Give me a date, I won't hold you to it.

We haven't got time to stop for directions - we're late already.

There are two types of software - bad software and the next release.

The testers won't break the system but the user who thinks the CD drive is a drinks holder will.

If you want to make a very late project even later add more people to it.

Successful project management is spotting the projects that will succeed and shouting "mine" and for the
rest ducking and shouting "yours".

Project management is just common sense - the trouble is common sense isn't very common.

Murphy was an optimist.

Cohn's Law

The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything.
Stability is achieved when you spend all your time doing nothing but reporting on the nothing you are
doing.

Woehlke's Law

Nothing gets done till nothing gets done.

Project Managers will not get the staff they need so long as they muddle through with overtime, ulcers
and super-human effort. Only when deadlines are missed will senior management approve the staff who,
had they been available at the outset, would have prevented the missed deadlines.

Hoggarth's Law

Attempts to get answers early in a project fail as there are many more wrong questions than right ones.
Activity during the early stages should be dedicated to finding the correct questions. Once the correct
questions have been identified correct answers will naturally fall out of subsequent work without grief or
excitement and there will be understanding of what the project is meant to achieve.

Machiavelli's caution for Project Managers

"And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to
conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of
things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and
lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new."

Nicolo Machiavelli c.1505 (trans. W. K. Marriott)