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.