Project Management Proverbs

1. You cannot produce a baby in one month by impregnating nine women.

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

3. The most valuable and least used word in project manager's vocabulary is "NO".

4. The more ridiculous the deadline, the more it costs to try to meet it.

5. The more desperate the situation, the more optimistic the situatee.

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

7. You can freeze the user's specification but he won't stop expecting.

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

9. What you don't know hurts you.

10. What is not on paper has not been said.

11. No major project is ever installed on time, within budget, with the same staff that started it.

12. Projects progress quickly until they become 90 percent complete; then they remain at 90 percent complete forever.

13. If project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.

14. Project teams detest progress reporting because it vividly demonstrates their lack of progress.

15. How does a project get to be a year late? ..... one day at a time.

16. Plan the work, then work the plan.

17. If you fail to plan, then plan to fail.

18. If they know nothing of what you are doing, they suspect you are doing nothing.

19. If you haven't identified a risk, you are already taking it.

20. The first 90 percent of the task takes 90 percent of the time. The last 10 percent of the task takes the other 90 percent.