104 Laws of Project Management

1. "A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well planned project only twice as long as expected."
2. "A change freeze is like the abominable snowman: it is a myth and would anyway melt when heat is applied."
3. "A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning."
4. "A minute saved at the start is just as effective as one saved at the end."
5. "A problem shared is a buck passed."
6. "A project ain't over until the fat cheque is cashed."
7. "A project gets a year late one day at a time."
8. "A project is one small step for the project sponsor, one giant leap for the project manager."
9. "A two year project will take three years, a three year project will never finish "
10. "A user is somebody who tells you what they want the day you give them what they asked for."
11. "A user will tell you anything you ask about, but nothing more."
12. "A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on."
13. "Activity is not achievement."
14. "All project managers face problems on Monday mornings - good project managers are working on next Monday's problems."
15. "Any project can be estimated accurately (once it's completed)."
16. "Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything."
17. "At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out."
18. "Estimators do it in groups - bottom up and top down."
19. "Everyone asks for a strong project manager - when they get him they don't want him."
20. "Fast - cheap - good: you can have any two."
21. "Feather and down are padding - changes and contingencies will be real events."
22. "Finely chopped cabbage in mayonnaise - Coleslaw."
23. "For a project manager overruns are as certain as death and taxes."
24. "Furious activity does not necessarily equate to progress and is no substitute for understanding."
25. "Good control reveals problems early - which only means you'll have longer to worry about them."
26. "Good estimators aren't modest: if it's huge they say so."
27. "Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when."
28. "Good project managers admit mistakes: that's why you so rarely meet a good project manager."
29. "Good project managers know when not to manage a project."
30. "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."
31. "If an IT project works the first time, it is wrong."
32. "If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried."
33. "If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong."
34. "If it can't possibly go wrong, it will - O'Malley's corollary to Murphy's law."
35. "If it can go wrong it will - Murphy's law."
36. "If it happens once it's ignorance, if it happens twice it's neglect, if it happens three times it's policy."
37. "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck."
38. "If it wasn't for the 'last minute', nothing would get done."
39. "If project content is allowed to change freely the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress."
40. "If there is a 50% chance of something going wrong then 9 times out of 10 it will."
41. "If there is anything to do, do it! "
42. "If there were no problem people there'd be no need for people who solve problems."
43. "If you're 6 months late on a milestone due next week but really believe you can make it, you're a project manager."
44. "If you can interpret project status data in several different ways, only the most painful interpretation will be correct."
45. "If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven't understood the plan."
46. "If you don't attack the risks, the risks will attack you."
47. "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."
48. "If you don't plan, it doesn't work. If you do plan, it doesn't work either. Why plan!"
49. "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."
50. "If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there."
51. "If you fail to plan you are planning to fail."
52. "If you have time to do it over again, you'll never get away with doing it right the first time."
53. "It's not the hours that count, it's what you do in those hours."
54. "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)."
55. "It will go wrong in the worst possible way - Sod's law."
56. "Managing IT people is like herding cats."
57. "Metrics are learned men's excuses."
58. "Murphy, O'Malley, Sod and Parkinson are alive and well - and working on your project."
59. "Never underestimate the ability of senior management to buy a bad idea and fail to buy a good idea."
60. "No plan ever survived contact with the enemy."
61. "No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirement - yours won't be the first to."
62. "Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it."
63. "Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is the correct one."
64. "Overtime is a figment of the naïve project manager's imagination."
65. "People under pressure do not think faster."
66. "Planning is an unnatural process, doing something is much more fun."
67. "Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal."
68. "Powerful project managers don't solve problems, they get rid of them."
69. "Projects happen in two ways: a) Planned and then executed or b) Executed, stopped, planned and then executed."
70. "Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance."
71. "Some projects finish on time in spite of project management best practices."
72. "Some things that don't count are counted, many things that count aren't counted."
73. "The bitterness of poor quality last long after the sweetness of making a date is forgotten."
74. "The conditions attached to a promise are forgotten, only the promise is remembered."
75. "The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time the last 10% takes the other 90%."
76. "The first myth of management is that it exists."
77. "The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the situatee."
78. "The more ridiculous the deadline the more money will be wasted trying to meet it."
79. "The more you plan the luckier you get. "
80. "The most successful project managers have perfected the skill of being comfortable being uncomfortable."
81. "The most valuable and least used phrase in a project manager's vocabulary is "I don't know"."
82. "The most valuable and least used word in a project manager's vocabulary is "NO"."
83. "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."
84. "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."
85. "The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale."
86. "The same work under the same conditions will be estimated differently by ten different estimators or by one estimator at ten different times."
87. "The sooner you begin coding the later you finish."
88. "The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up."
89. "There's never enough time to do it right first time but there's always enough time to go back and do it again."
90. "There are no good project managers - only lucky ones."
91. "There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop."
92. "There is such a thing as an unrealistic timescale."
93. "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."
94. "Too few people on a project can't solve the problems - too many create more problems than they solve."
95. "Users get the systems they deserve."
96. "Warning: dates in the calendar are closer than you think."
97. "What is not on paper has not been said."
98. "What you don't know hurts you."
99. "When all's said and done a lot more is said than done."
100. "When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be considered complete."
101. "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion - Parkinson's law."
102. "You can build a reputation on what you're going to do."
103. "You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it."
104. Project management with lot of documents is not project management