👷🏻Harold Kerzner - Collected Quotes

"The acceptance of project management has not been easy, however. Many executives are not willing to accept change and are inflexible when it comes to adapting to a different environment." (Harold Kerzner, "Project Management", 1979)

"There are always 'class or prestige' gaps between various levels of management. There are also functional gaps between working units of the organization. If we superimpose the management gaps on top of the functional gaps, we find that companies are made up of small operational islands that refuse to communicate with one another for fear that giving up information may strengthen their opponents. The project manager’s responsibility is to get these islands to communicate cross-functionally toward common goals and objectives." (Harold Kerzner, "Project Management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling", 1979)

"There is no such thing as a good or bad organizational structure; there are only appropriate or inappropriate ones." (Harold Kerzner, "Project Management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling", 1979)

"Project management is the planning, organizing, directing, and controlling of company resources for a relatively short-term objective that has been established to complete specific goals and objectives. Furthermore, project management utilises the systems approach to management by having functional personnel (the vertical hierarchy) assigned to a specific project (the horizontal hierarchy)." (Harold Kerzner, "Project Management for Executives", 1982)

"The acceptance of project management has not been easy, however. Many executives are not willing to accept change and are inflexible when it comes to adapting to a different environment." (Harold Kerzner, "Project Management for Executives", 1982)

"Project failures are not always the result of poor methodology; the problem may be poor implementation. Unrealistic objectives or poorly defined executive expectations are two common causes of poor implementation. Good methodologies do not guarantee success, but they do imply that the project will be managed correctly." (Harold Kerzner, "Strategic Planning for Project Management using a Project Management Maturity Model", 2001)

"Success or failure of a project depends upon the ability of key personnel to have sufficient data for decision-making. Project management is often considered to be both an art and a science. It is an art because of the strong need for interpersonal skills, and the project planning and control forms attempt to convert part of the 'art' into a science." (Harold Kerzner, "Strategic Planning for Project Management using a Project Management Maturity Model", 2001)

"Today, excellent companies realize that project failures have more to do with behavioral shortcomings - poor employee morale, negative human relations, low productivity, and lack of commitment." (Harold Kerzner, "In search of excellence in project management", 1998)

"Today, most project management practitioners focus on planning failure. If this aspect of the project can be compressed, or even eliminated, then the magnitude of the actual failure, should it occur, would be diminished. A good project management methodology helps to reduce planning failure. Today, we believe that planning failure, when it occurs, is due in large part to the project manager’s inability to perform effective risk management." (Harold Kerzner, "Strategic Planning for Project Management using a Project Management Maturity Model", 2001)

"When unmeetable expectations are formed, failure is virtually assured, since we have defined failure as unmet expectations. This is called a planning failure and is the difference between what was planned to be accomplished and what was, in fact, achievable. The second component of failure is poor performance or actual failure. This is the difference between what was achievable and what was actually accomplished." (Harold Kerzner, "Strategic Planning for Project Management using a Project Management Maturity Model", 2001)

"Project management is the art of creating the illusion that any outcome is the result of a series of predetermined, deliberate acts when, in fact, it was dumb luck." (Harold Kerzner, "Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling", 2009)

👷🏻Kevin Forsberg - Collected Quotes

"A model is a representation of the real thing used to depict a process, investigate an opportunity or a risk, or evaluate an attribute. Properly constructed models are valuable tools because they focus attention on critical issues while stripping away less important details that tend to obscure what is needed to understand and to manage. Because they idealize a complex situation, a variety of different models can be constructed to represent the same situation. A useful model will be simple, but it must retain the essence of the situation to be managed [...]" (Kevin Forsberg et al, "Visualizing Project Management: Models and frameworks for mastering complex systems" 3rd Ed., 2005)

"Being temporary, projects often bring together people unknown to each other. The newly formed group usually includes specialists motivated by the work itself and by their individual contributions. Teams of highly skilled technicians can make costly errors - even fatal ones - simply because the members fail to understand or internalize a systematic approach for applying best practices to project management. A major factor critical to project success is the availability of an effective and intuitive management process - one the group will quickly buy into and build their team upon." (Kevin Forsberg et al, "Visualizing Project Management: Models and frameworks for mastering complex systems" 3rd Ed., 2005)

"Developers often focus on what is possible technically regardless of the constraints of cost, a limiting schedule, or what the customer requires." (Kevin Forsberg et al, "Visualizing Project Management: Models and frameworks for mastering complex systems" 3rd Ed., 2005)

"Failure usually results from a lack of a common approach to accomplish the work as a team. Inadequate leadership fails to create the environment in which teams can flourish. Furthermore, potential team members are seldom trained in how to share their efforts to accomplish team goals. The team may also assume they know more about teamwork than they actually do. So we need to be able to differentiate between superficial teamwork and the real thing." (Kevin Forsberg et al, "Visualizing Project Management: Models and frameworks for mastering complex systems" 3rd Ed., 2005)

"In project management there are two levels of opportunities and risks. Because a project is the pursuit of an opportunity, the first category, the macro opportunity, is the project opportunity itself. The approach to achieving the project opportunity and the mitigation of associated project-level risks are structured into the strategy and tactics of the project cycle, the selected decision gates, the teaming arrangements, key personnel selected, and so on. The second level encompasses the tactical opportunities and risks within the project that become apparent at lower levels of decomposition and as project cycle phases are planned and executed. This can include emerging, unproven technology; incremental and evolutionary methods that promise high returns; and the temptation to circumvent proven practices in order to deliver better, faster, and cheaper." (Kevin Forsberg et al, "Visualizing Project Management: Models and frameworks for mastering complex systems" 3rd Ed., 2005)

"Opportunities and risks are endemic to the project environment. However well planned a project may be, there will always be residual project risk." (Kevin Forsberg et al, "Visualizing Project Management: Models and frameworks for mastering complex systems" 3rd Ed., 2005)

"Project failures can frequently be traced to unrealistic technical, cost, or schedule targets. Such targets may be entirely arbitrary or based on bad assumptions - setting team members up for failure. Furthermore, the goals that motivate one team member may not motivate another member. All tasks don’t have to be inherently motivating - that’s not sensible. But there have to be motivating factors, if by nothing more than participating in goal determination. This also helps ensure adequate opportunity and risk identification, analysis, and management." (Kevin Forsberg et al, "Visualizing Project Management: Models and frameworks for mastering complex systems" 3rd Ed., 2005)

"The appropriate models help avoid costly errors that can lead to failure. One of the major sources of project failure is f lawed requirements and scope management. Models of the project environment, therefore, need to address the development and management of project requirements. Continuing to work on the project solution with an insufficient understanding of stakeholder requirements and a deficient requirements development process often leads to expensive time delays and redesigns. This doesn’t have to be the case. A strong requirements development and management process model can provide that ounce of prevention." (Kevin Forsberg et al, "Visualizing Project Management: Models and frameworks for mastering complex systems" 3rd Ed., 2005)

"When we pursue opportunity, we normally incur risk. The opportunity to experience the thrill of an exciting sport like hang gliding or scuba diving brings with it the attendant risks. Many people instinctively make the trade that the thrill is worth the risks. Others decline." (Kevin Forsberg et al, "Visualizing Project Management: Models and frameworks for mastering complex systems" 3rd Ed., 2005)

"When we fail to grasp the systemic source of problems, we are left to treat symptoms rather than eliminate underlying causes. Without systemic thinking, the best we can ever do is adapt or react. Systems thinking, powered by visual models, stimulates creative - rather than adaptive - behavior. [...] To benefit from systems thinking, the project team needs to extend that viewpoint upward to the bigger picture of the project’s overall environment."(Kevin Forsberg et al, "Visualizing Project Management: Models and frameworks for mastering complex systems" 3rd Ed., 2005)

👷🏻Phil Simon - Collected Quotes

"Adding more resources can have mixed results. If the right people are involved at the right time to perform tasks within their abilities, the benefits will outweigh the costs. However, adding more people will not always fix an issue and make up for lost time. There is no guarantee that these steps will put a project back on target." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"As a general rule, implementations do not just spontaneously combust. Failures tend to stem from the aggregation of many issues. Although some issues may have been known since the early stages of the project (for example, the sales cycle or system design), implementation teams discover the majority of problems during the middle of the implementation, typically during some form of testing." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"Implementation issues are not confined to the data and system realms. On the contrary, many of the problems encountered during a typical implementation stem from people, the roles they are required to play, political issues, and comfort zones." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"Implementing new systems is not like baking a cake. Organizations cannot follow a recipe with the following ingredients: three consultants, six weeks of testing, two training classes, and a healthy dose of project management. Nor do projects bake for six months until complete, after which time everyone enjoys a delicious piece of cake. For all sorts of reasons, a well-conceived and well-run project may fail, whereas a horribly managed project may come in under budget, ahead of schedule, and do everything that the vendor promised at the onset." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"Implementing new systems provides organizations with unique opportunities not only to improve their technologies, but to redefine and improve key business processes. Ultimately, for organizations to consider these new systems successes, the post-legacy environment must ensure that business processes, client end users, and systems work together." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"Organizations cannot expect new systems to concurrently deliver the benefits of integration and decentralization. By definition, more of one means less of another. Decide in advance the acceptable trade-offs, and live by those decisions." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"Organizations considering customizations should look carefully at their available options, ideally with the help of experienced business and technical consultants. It is imperative that they carefully consider the short- and long-term implications of these customizations, lest they be stuck with an unsustainable status quo and paint themselves into a corner." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"Organizations face challenges of all kinds after activating their new systems. To be sure, these challenges are typically not as significant as those associated with going live. Still, executives and end users should never assume that system activation means that everyone is home free. Systems are hardly self-sufficient, and issues always appear." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"Organizations often fail to understand that business processes do not exist in a vacuum; they must be viewed against the backdrop of the technology used to enable those processes. Systems and business processes are related in a symbiotic - but not causal - manner." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"Pre-implementation, post-implementation, and ongoing data audits are invaluable tools for organizations. Used judiciously by knowledgeable and impartial resources, audits can detect, avoid, and minimize issues that can derail an implementation or cause a live system to fail. Rather than view them as superfluous expenses, organizations would be wise to conduct them at key points throughout the system’s life cycle." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"Some end users are so accustomed to seeing data in a certain way that they insist that new reports present the data in a manner identical to legacy reports. This is a problem: no two systems represent data in the same manner." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"The best managed project may fail, whereas a horribly managed project may come in under budget, ahead of schedule, and do everything that the vendor promised at the onset. In reality, however, organizations are unlikely to find themselves in one of these extreme scenarios. On a fundamental level, successfully activating and utilizing a new system is about minimizing risk from day one until the end of the project and beyond. The organization that can do this stands the best chance of averting failure." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"Understanding the causes of system failures may help organizations avoid them, although there are no guarantees." (Phil Simon, "Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects", 2010)

"Data science is an iterative process. It starts with a hypothesis (or several hypotheses) about the system we’re studying, and then we analyze the information. The results allow us to reject our initial hypotheses and refine our understanding of the data. When working with thousands of fields and millions of rows, it’s important to develop intuitive ways to reject bad hypotheses quickly." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"It’s a mistake to think of data and data visualizations as static terms. They are the very antitheses of stasis." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"Just because data is visualized doesn’t necessarily mean that it is accurate, complete, or indicative of the right course of action. Exhibiting a healthy skepticism is almost always a good thing." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"Metadata serves as a strong and increasingly important complement to both structured and unstructured data. Even if you can easily visualize and interpret primary source data, it behooves you to also collect, analyze, and visualize its metadata. Incorporating metadata may very well enhance your understanding of the source data." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"The term linked data describes the practice of exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge on the semantic Web. Both humans and machines benefit when previously unconnected data is connected." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"There are myriad questions that we can ask from data today. As such, it’s impossible to write enough reports or design a functioning dashboard that takes into account every conceivable contingency and answers every possible question." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"To be sure, data doesn’t always need to be visualized, and many data visualizations just plain suck. Look around you. It’s not hard to find truly awful representations of information. Some work in concept but fail because they are too busy; they confuse people more than they convey information [...]. Visualization for the sake of visualization is unlikely to produce desired results - and this goes double in an era of Big Data. Bad is still bad, even and especially at a larger scale." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"Visual Organizations benefit from routinely visualizing many different types and sources of data. Doing so allows them to garner a better understanding of what’s happening and why. Equipped with this knowledge, employees are able to ask better questions and make better business decisions." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"We acquire more information through our visual system than we do through all our other senses combined. We understand things better and quicker when we see them." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"We are all becoming more comfortable with data. Data visualization is no longer just something we have to do at work. Increasingly, we want to do it as consumers and as citizens. Put simply, visualizing helps us understand what’s going on in our lives - and how to solve problems." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"While critical, the arrival of Big Data is far from the only data-related trend to take root over the past decade. The arrival of Big Data is one of the key factors explaining the rise of the Visual Organization." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

👷🏻James P Lewis - Collected Quotes

"A lot of people want to be managers, but many of them don’t want to manage." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"A methodology should be as simple as possible to get the job done. If you make the requirements a burden, rather than a help, then people will resist following them. You want to achieve a consistent, workable approach to managing projects, not hang a noose around the manager’s neck." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"A problem is defined as a gap between where you are and where you want to be that is confronted with obstacles that make closing the gap difficult. It is actually the obstacles that make the gap a problem." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"A project methodology must unambiguously specify what a manager must do to document, execute, and control a project. It must also specify what approvals are needed for various actions, such as procurement, changes to plan, budget variances, risks, and so on. It should tell who is responsible for various aspects of the project, and should spell out the limits of each stakeholder’s authority, responsibility, and accountability." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"[…] all activities are probabilistic, not deterministic! There is a probability that a task can be completed in a certain time, given a fixed level of effort. If you want to guarantee that the task is finished in a fixed time period, then you must vary effort, reduce scope, or sacrifice quality. You can’t have it all. Therefore, an exact estimate is an oxymoron." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"As a rule, it is best to separate discovery from development." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"Choosing a proper project strategy can mean the difference between success and failure." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"Control cannot be achieved through micromanaging." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"Control is exercised by comparing progress against planned performance, and taking steps to correct for any deviations from the proper course." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"Ensuring that you have a shared understanding of the mission, vision, and problem is the most important action you can take as a project manager." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"Getting project management to work in an organization requires a change in culture." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"If you have no plan, you cannot have control, by definition, because it is your plan that tells where you are supposed to be in the first place. Further, if you don’t know where you are, you can’t have control. This comes from your information system. Most organizations have difficulties with both of these." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"If you treat people as though they are responsible, they tend to behave that way." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"In any system of humans or machines, the element in the system that has the greatest variability in its behavior will control the system." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"In general, two or three small projects are all one person should manage." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"Management is proactive, not reactive" (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"No project can succeed when the team members have no commitment to the plan, so the first rule of project planning is that the people who must do the work should help plan that part of the project. You will not only gain their commitment to the plan, but also most likely cover all of the important issues that you may individually have forgotten."(James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"Note that a project always begins as a concept, and a concept is usually a bit fuzzy. Our job as a team is to clarify the concept, to turn it into a shared understanding that the entire team will accept. It is failure to do this that causes many project failures." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"Projects often fail at the beginning, not the end." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"Projects seldom fail because of tools. They fail because of people!" (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"So the first stage in a project is to make sure you have correctly defined the problem being solved, that you have developed a vision for what the end result will be, and that you have stated your mission." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"The big fallacy in our assumptions is that the world will stand still while we execute our project plan." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"The difference between risks and threats is that a risk is something that can simply happen - an accident, act of nature, or missed deadline - whereas a threat is something that may be done by another entity." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"The difference between strategy and tactics is that tactics get you down to the 'nitty-gritty' details of exactly how you are going to do the work." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"The entire reason for managing a project is to make sure you get the results desired by the organization. This is commonly called being in control, and it is what is expected of a project manager." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"The only time you ever get 80 percent availability from people is when they are tied to their work station, and the only people for whom this is true are factory workers. You may get close to 80 percent availability from them, but for knowledge workers - who aren’t tied to their work stations - you never get such a high level. It is more likely to be around 50 or 60 percent." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"The only truly successful project is the one that delivers what it is supposed to, gets results, and meets stakeholder expectations." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"The primary objective for a manager is to meet the needs of the organization while helping the followers meet their own needs in the process. To do this, you must help individuals find meaning in their work." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"The self-fulfilling prophecy is one of the most important principles from psychology, at least for leaders. The principle is that you tend to get what you expect from others. Thus, if you expect poor performance from a person, you will tend to get it, and conversely." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"The way a problem is defined determines how we attempt to solve it. […] If the definition is wrong, you will develop the right solution to the wrong problem." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"The word culture designates the sum total of the values, attitudes, traditions, and behaviors that exist in an organization." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"The word means a belief, or model of reality. A paradigm is what we believe to be true about any given situation, thing, or event. It is usually a deeply held conviction about how things actually are." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"You can’t delegate responsibility without giving a person authority commensurate with it." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)