Fast Facts

Some interesting information (and observations!) relating to projects and project management:

Scope Project Management

• Initial planning is the most vital part of a project. The review of most failed projects indicates the disasters were well planned to happen from the start.
• Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it.
• At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.
• The most valuable and least used WORD in a project manager’s vocabulary is “NO”.
• When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!

Time Project Management

• You can force someone into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot force him to meet it.
• If you fail to plan you are planning to fail.
• Tasks progress quickly until they become 90 percent complete and then remain at 90 percent forever.
• A project gets a year late one day at a time.

Quality Project Management

• 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.
• A change freeze is like the abominable snowman – it is a myth and would anyway melt when heat is applied.
• While there never seems to be enough time to do it right the first time, there always seems to enough time to go back and do it again.
• 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.
• Projects happen in two ways: a) Planned and then executed or b) Executed, stopped, planned, and then executed.

Cost Project Management

• 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).

Human Resources Project Management

• Most managers succeed on the skills and strength of their staff.
• If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.
• Too few people on a project can’t solve the problems – too many create more problems than they solve.
• A comfortable project manager is one waiting for their next assignment (or on the verge of failure).
• Everyone asks for a strong project manager – when they get one they don’t want one.

Communications Project Management

• A user will tell you anything you ask about, but nothing more.
• Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is the probably the correct one.
• If it’s not on paper – it wasn’t said.
• In God we trust, everything else needs to be on paper.
• A working meeting has about six people attending. Meetings larger than this are for information transfer.
• 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.
• What I hear, I FORGET; What I see, I REMEMBER; What I do, I UNDERSTAND.

Risk Project Management

• Wrong decisions made early can be recovered. Right decisions made late cannot corrected.
• The more you plan the luckier you get.
• If you don’t attack the risks, the risks will attack you.
• What you don’t know hurts you.
• The most valuable and least used PHRASE in a project manager’s vocabulary is “I don’t know”.

Procurement Project Management

• Fast – cheap – good: pick any two.
• The conditions attached to a promise are forgotten, only the promise is remembered.