Change Management
"Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything."
"Change is inevitable - except from vending machines."
"If project content is allowed to change freely the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress."
"There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop."
Cost Management
"A project ain't over until the fat cheque is cashed."
"Fast - cheap - good: you can have any two."
"For a project manager overruns are as certain as death and taxes."
[Juhani's Law:] "The cost of a compromise will always be more than that of either of the uncompromised alternatives."
"The more ridiculous the deadline the more money will be wasted trying to meet it."
Project Execution
"Activity is not achievement."
"Furious activity does not necessarily equate to progress and is no substitute for understanding."
"Good control reveals problems early - which only means you'll have longer to worry about them."
"If it happens once it's ignorance, if it happens twice it's neglect, if it happens three times it's policy."
"If you can interpret project status data in several different ways, only the most painful interpretation will be correct."
"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."
"Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it."
"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."
Project Managers
"A project is one small step for the project sponsor, one giant leap for the project manager."
"All project managers face problems on Monday mornings - good project managers are working on next Monday's problems."
"Everyone asks for a strong project manager - when they get him they don't want him."
"Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when."
"Good project managers admit mistakes: that's why you so rarely meet a good project manager."
"Good project managers know when not to manage a project."
"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."
"There are no good project managers - only lucky ones."
"Overtime is a figment of the naïve project manager's imagination."
"Powerful project managers don't solve problems, they get rid of them."
"The most successful project managers have perfected the skill of being comfortable being uncomfortable."
"The most valuable and least used PHRASE in a project manager's vocabulary is "I don't know"."
"The most valuable and least used WORD in a project manager's vocabulary is "NO"."
Project Planning
"A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well planned project only twice as long as expected."
"A change freeze is like the abominable snowman: it is a myth and would anyway melt when heat is applied."
"A minute saved at the start is just as effective as one saved at the end."
"Any project can be estimated accurately (once it's completed)."
Fyfe's Laws: (1) Information necessitating a change in plans will be communicated to the planner after - and only after - the plans are complete. (2) The more innocuous the change in plans appears the great the change will actually be. (3) It is always simpler to start over from scratch than make changes in a plan already started. (4) The more carefully and painstakingly a sample is analyzed the greater the probability it will be found irrelevant.
"If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong."
"If everything seems to be going well, you obviously don't know what's going on.” (Edward Murphy)
"If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven't understood the plan."
"No plan ever survived contact with the enemy."
"If it wasn't for the 'last minute' nothing would get done."
"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."
"If you don't plan, it doesn't work. If you do plan, it doesn't work either. Why plan!"
"If you fail to plan you are planning to fail."
"If you have time to do it over again, you'll never get away with doing it right the first time."
"If you want to make God laugh have a definite plan."
"Never put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after."
"People make a plan work, a plan alone seldom makes people work."
"Planning is an unnatural process, doing something is much more fun."
"Planning reduces uncertainty: you rule out at least one way the project could turn out."
"Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal."
"Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance."
"Some projects finish on time in spite of project management best practices."
"The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time the last 10% takes the other 90%."
"The more you plan the luckier you get."
"The nice thing about no planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression."
"The same work under the same conditions will be estimated differently by ten different estimators or by one estimator at ten different times."
"The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up."
"There is such a thing as an unrealistic timescale."
"There's never enough time to do it right first time but there's always enough time to go back and do it again."
"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."
"Warning: dates in the calendar are closer than you think."
Projects
"A project gets a year late one day at a time."
"At some point in the project you're going to have to break down and finally define the requirements."
"At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out."
[Gordon's First Law:] "If a project is not worth doing at all, it's not worth doing well."
"If an IT project works the first time, it is wrong."
"No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirement - yours won't be the first to."
"Projects happen in two ways: a) Planned and then executed or b) Executed, stopped, planned and then executed."
"Projects don't all fail in the end, they fail at the beginning."
"The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale."
"There is no such thing as an IT project only business projects some of which happen to involve IT."
Risk Management
"A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning."
"If you don't attack the risks, the risks will attack you."
Senior Management
"Never underestimate the ability of senior management to buy a bad idea and fail to buy a good idea."
"The typical project sponsor would rather starts ten projects than complete one single project. (Vrisou van Eck)
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