Project Management Sayings

Orion Software - For Quality Software Results

Software Development is our art form

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. --William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (II, v, 156-159)

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).

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

The most valuable and least used phrase in a project manager's vocabulary is: 'I don't know'.

Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it himself. --Weiler's Law

You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it.

The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the situatee.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. --Colin Powell

At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.

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

A problem shared is a buck passed.

You can't always wait for the guys at the top. Every manager at every level in the organization has an opportunity, big or small, to do something. Every manager's got some sphere of autonomy. Don't pass the buck up the line. --Bob Anderson

The Buck Stops Here. --sign on President Harry Truman's desk

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity. --Douglas MacArthur

A change freeze is like the abominable snowman: it is a myth and would anyway melt when heat is applied.

A user will tell you anything you ask about, but nothing more.

A user is somebody who tells you what they really want the day you give them what they asked for.

Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is the correct one.

What you don't know hurts you.

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

There's never enough time to do it right the first time, but there's always enough time to go back and do it again.

The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the sweetness of making a date is forgotten.

"Write code" is definitely important. "Release early", too. But more important than either of those is "Understand the problem you're trying to solve"; and most important of all: "Do it right". --Colin Percival

I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Estimators do it in groups - bottom up and top down.

Good estimators aren't modest: if it's huge they say so.

The sooner you begin coding, the later you finish.

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

What is not on paper has not been said.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

If you don't know where you are, a map won't help.

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. --Ben Franklin

A bad plan is better than no plan.

A day for firm decisions! Or is it?

If you don't attack the risks, the risks will attack you.

If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven't understood the plan.

If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

If you have time to do it over again, you'll never get away with doing it right the first time.

If you can interpret project status data in several different ways, only the most painful interpretation will be correct.

If you're 6 months late on a milestone due next week, but really believe you can make it, you're a project manager.

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.

If you've lost focus, just sit down and be still. Take the idea and rock it to and fro. Keep some of it and throw some away, and it will renew itself. You need do no more. --Clarissa Pinkola Estes

If you're a champion, you have to have it in your heart. --Chris Evert

If you hit the bullseye every time, you're too close to the target. --Wendell Castle

If you want it bad, you'll get it bad, and the worse you want it, the worse you'll get it.

If you don't plan, it doesn't work. If you do plan, it doesn't work either. Why plan!

If you are as confused as I am, then you know as much as I do.

If you're already in a hole, there's no use to continue digging. --Walters's Law of Management

If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.

If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings'. --Dave Barry

If you can't get your work done in a 24-hour day, work nights.

A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.

The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.

A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well planned project only twice as long as expected.

When all's said and done, a lot more is said than done.

If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.

Feather and down are padding - changes and contingencies will be real events.

Anything that can be changed will be changed, until there is no time left to change anything.

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

A decision made at night may be changed in the morning. --Samoan Proverb

If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed. --Chinese Proverb

Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist. --Richard M. Nixon

Instead of reacting to the chaos of change, we could respond to the rhythm of change.

The only one who likes change is a wet baby.

It is not the strongest of the species who survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. --Charles Darwin

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. --James A. Baldwin

Change is the new normal.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference. --Reinhold Niebuhr

The better part of valour is discretion. --Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. --Winston Churchill

Change is the only constant in the universe.

There are no good project managers - only lucky ones.

The more you plan, the luckier you get.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. --Seneca

The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself. --Douglas MacArthur

A project is one small step for the project sponsor, one giant leap for the project manager.

Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when.

If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.

Everyone asks for a strong project manager - when they get him they don't want him.

Overtime is a figment of the naïve project manager's imagination.

Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance.

Good project managers know when not to manage a project.

Metrics are learned-men's excuses.

For a project manager, overruns are as certain as death and taxes.

If there were no problem people, there'd be no need for people who solve problems.

Some projects finish on time in spite of project management best practices.

Fast - cheap - good: you can have any two.

There is such a thing as an unrealistic timescale.

The more ridiculous the deadline, the more money will be wasted trying to meet it.

Sunk costs don't matter. Don't make decisions based on how much money you've already lost. Make your decisions based on how much you expect to gain - or lose - going forward. You can't get back what's already gone.

The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale.

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.

Never underestimate the ability of senior management to buy a bad idea and fail to buy a good idea.

The most successful project managers have perfected the skill of being comfortable being uncomfortable.

You can build a reputation on what you're going to do.

When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be considered complete.

If it wasn't for the 'last minute', nothing would get done.

Nothing gets done till nothing gets done.

Warning: dates in the calendar are closer than you think.

There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.

A project gets a year late one day at a time.

Better late than really late.

A project ain't over until the fat check is cashed.

Powerful project managers don't solve problems, they get rid of them.

No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirement - yours won't be the first to.

The finish date is the earliest date for which you can't prove the project won't be complete.

Activity is not achievement.

The first myth of management is that it exists.

Managing IT people is like herding cats.

A minute saved at the start is just as effective as one saved at the end.

People under pressure do not think faster.

If an IT project works the first time, it is wrong.

Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal.

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.

Good control reveals problems early - which only means you'll have longer to worry about them.

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.

Planning is an unnatural process, doing something is much more fun.

Projects happen in two ways: a) Planned and then executed or b) Executed, stopped, planned and then executed.

What, me worry? --Alfred E. Neuman

It's not the hours that count, it's what you do in those hours.

If there is anything to do, do it!

If anything can go wrong, it will. --Murphy's Law

If it can't possibly go wrong, it will. --O'Malley's corollary to Murphy's law And it will go wrong in the worst possible way. --Sod's law

Murphy, O'Malley, Sod and Parkinson are alive and well - and working on your project.

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. --Murphy's Corollary

Things get worse under pressure. --Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics

Sufficient research will tend to support your theory. --Murphy's Law of Research

Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.

If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of ten it will. --Paul Harvey

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. --Parkinson's law.

A two year project will take three years, a three year project will never finish.

Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how you can get along without it.

A lack of planning by you does not constitute an emergency for me.

Give me a date, I won't hold you to it.

There are two types of software - bad software and the next release.

The testers won't break the system, but the user who thinks the cd-rom drive is a drink holder will.

The project manager is the linchpin in the horizontal/vertical organizations we're creating. --Price Waterhouse

What's good politics is bad economics; what's bad politics is good economics; what's good economics is bad politics; what's bad economics is good politics. --Baer's Quartet

To estimate the time it takes to do a task: estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by 2, and change the unit of measure to the next highest unit. Thus we allocate 2 days for a one hour task. --Westheimer's Rule

That which gets reviewed and evaluated, gets done.

The hard drives out the soft. Those things that are solidly measurable (hard things) tend to take attention away from those that are not (the soft ones).

What gets measured gets managed.

You don't get what you expect, you get what you inspect.

What gets rewarded gets repeated.

Nothing is as easy as it looks.

Everything takes longer than you think.

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. And if there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then.

If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. --Abraham Lincoln

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. --Abraham Lincoln

He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met. --Abraham Lincoln

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. --Abraham Lincoln

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. --Abraham Lincoln

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. --Abraham Lincoln

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. --Abraham Lincoln

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes. --Winston Churchill

It is no use saying "we are doing our best". You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary. --Winston Churchill

Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

Every solution breeds new problems.

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less, until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.

To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. --Niels Bohr

An expert is not someone who does not make mistakes. Rather, an expert is someone who knows howto correct his mistakes.

The person who makes no mistakes, does not usually make anything. --William Connor Magee

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. --Frank Lloyd Wright

Good project managers admit mistakes: that's why you so rarely meet a good project manager.

To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic. --Cicero 106BC-43BC

Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

The first myth of management is that it exists.

Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss putting in an honest day's work.

Always do everything you ask of those you command. --George Patton

Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.

Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.

To err is human, To blame it on a computer is even more so, To forgive the computer is the height of human imbecility, And to destroy said computer with a baseball bat, divine.

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork. --Edward Abbey

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.

When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time. --Abrams's Advice

Free advice costs nothing until you act upon it.

Free advice is worth all the money you paid for it.

Rule of Accuracy: When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer. Provided, of course, that you know there is a problem.

The things we don't estimate at all, we estimate the worst.

And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. --Nicolo Machiavelli c.1505

A foolish man may be known by six things: Anger without cause, speech without profit, change without progress, inquiry without object, putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends. --Arabian Proverb

The IT project manager must be innovative but not wasteful. They must plan but operate in an environment that does not allow planning. They must work at great speed but be subject to deliberate decision-making.

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank. --Peter Drucker

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. --Bertrand Russell

Management is mostly applied clinical psychology, dealing with the personalities and disagreements of the team, which is not what you might have thought you were getting into. --Donald Norman

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. --Brooks' Law

It is the little leaks that sink big ships.

Business is a team sport.

Hire people you can trust, then go ahead and trust them. --Dan Lyons

To trust everybody is as disastrous as to distrust everybody. --Hesiodus ca 700BC

Trust in Allah, but tie your camel first. --Muhammad

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him. --Booker T. Washington

The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe. --Dr. Bones McCoy

Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible. He who has trusted where he ought not will surely mistrust where he ought not. --Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer. --Acheson's Rule of the Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is nothing more than the hardening of an organization's arteries. --William P. Anthony

The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty. --Eugene McCarthy

Man creates problems. Government and bureaucrats magnify them 100 times. --George Van Valkenburg

Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work. --Albert Einstein

In any bureaucracy, paper work increases as you spend more and more time reporting on the less and less you are doing.

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing. --Thomas Sowell

Strive to make proposed solutions as self-executing as possible. As the degree of discretion increases, so too does bureaucracy, delay, and expense. --Donald Rumsfeld

If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.

Most managers were trained to be the thing they most despise -- bureaucrats. --Alvin Toffler

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. --Mary McCarthy

Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses.

Over-seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureaucratic thinking. People who are seriously committed to mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up. --Michael J. Gelb

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned. -Milton Friedman

Never give a bureaucrat a chance to say no. --Morton C. Blackwell

Where self-interest is suppressed, it is replaced by a burdensome system of bureaucratic control that dries up the wellspring of initiative and creativity. --Pope John Paul II

When you have disciplined people, you don't need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don't need bureaucracy. --Jim Collins

The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline--a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place. --Jim Collins

The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility. --Brooks Atkinson

"Plausible Deniability" - where the chain of command is structured such that the upper rungs quarantine the blame to the lower rungs in a way that allows high-ranking officials to deny awareness of or connection to any illegal, disreputable, or unpopular acts.

Guidelines for bureaucrats: (1) When in charge, ponder. (2) When in trouble, delegate. (3) When in doubt, mumble. -- James H. Boren

Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress. --Jim Boren

A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members. --David Coblitz

Government machinery has been described as a marvelous labor saving device which enables ten men to do the work of one. --John Maynard Keynes

If we can ever make red tape nutritional, we can feed the world. --Robert Schaeberle

Bureaucrats are the only people in the world who can say absolutely nothing and mean it. --James H Boren

Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases. --Jerry Brown

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. --Peter F. Drucker

The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take. --C. Northcote Parkinson

Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. --Peter Drucker

Simply stated, it is sagacious to eschew obfuscation.

When policy fails, try thinking.

The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing todo. The hard part is doing it. --Normal Schwarzkopf

If you think you can't, you're right. --Carol Bartz, CEO, Autodesk

Great thinkers have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. --Albert Einstein

The fewer data needed, the better the information. And an overload of information, that is, anything much beyond what is truly needed, leads to information blackout. It does not enrich, but impoverishes. --Peter Drucker

Nothing focuses the mind better than the constant sight of a competitor who wants to wipe you off the map. --Wayne Calloway

You have to learn to treat people as a resource......you have to ask not what do they cost, but what is the yield, what can they produce? --Peter Drucker

The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice. --Mahatma Gandhi

Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led. --Warren G. Bennis

vis a vis Security and Proprietary technology: 'What one man can invent, another can discover.' --Sherlock Holmes, The Dancing Men

When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. --Sherlock Holmes, The Beryl Coronet

To appreciate where you are, sometimes you have to revisit where you came from.

No one ever complained at the end of a successful software project that they spent too much time in the design phase.

At some time in the project, you're going to have to breakdown and finally define the problem.

Good client relations are the key to a successful project.

It's never the technical stuff that gets you in trouble. It's the personalities and the politics.

Any software project you inherit was designed by an idiot - you'll need to fix it.

The man who pays the piper calls the tune. --English Proverb

Delivery is not necessarily the best time to discover the user requirements.

The journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step. --Chinese proverb

No part of the delivery process is as critical, nor as difficult - because requirements map the human world to the technological world. --Jim Highsmith

A 'Death March' is any project where the schedule has been arbitrarily compressed by half, the budget has been reduced by 50% or more, the requirements of the project are more than 50% of what can be reasonably expected, or for whatever reason, the risk of project failure is greater than 50%. --Ed Yourdon

Assessing project risk is a lot like herding cats. Problems can develop on any project at any time. Unanticipated market events can put the project at risk. Or your key programmer goes out on maternity leave. The client declares bankruptcy. Anything can happen.

The golden rules: - make a plan; - stick to it; - it's that simple; - it's that hard todo.

Cardinal Sins of Project Management: a) To be in trouble; b) To be in trouble and not know it; c) To be in trouble, know it, and ignore it.

Too much credit is given to the end result. The true lesson is in the struggle that takes place between the dream and reality. That struggle is a thing called life! --Garth Brooks

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. --John Lennon

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. --Frederick Douglass

Efficiency is intelligent laziness. --David Dunham

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. --Thomas Edison

Genius has limitations; stupidity is boundless.

Never attribute to deviousness what can be explained by stupidity (although inexperience is not equivalent to stupidity).

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. --Hanlon's Razor

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. --Albert Einstein

Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Reason has seldom failed us because it has seldom been tried. --Edward Abbey

Common sense is not so common. --Voltaire

He that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools. --Confucius

As soon as the development budget is exhausted, the panic budget is addressed.

Don't panic! --The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Marketing should establish a system of continuously collecting information about customer experience with the products. --ISO9004

Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and the instruction afterward.

Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

Experience is not the kindest of teachers, but it is certainly the best. --Swedish proverb

The Catch-22 dichotomy: in moving from school to a career, one cannot get a job without work experience, but such experience cannot be gained without a job.

Those who can, do; Those who can't, teach; and those who can't teach, teach gym.

No coach has ever won a game by what he knows; it's what his players know that counts.

Team involvement focuses members on the overall success of the project, and encourages more peer group review of important project detail.

Clear definition of the earned-value criteria for each task is essential and must be identified before setting a baseline for the plan.

Take care of the people first--people are the single most important factor to project success.

The world class principle: You can have 'world class' and 'the best of the best', but only if you are willing to abandon all other constraints - especially cost and time. --Max Wideman

Project Sponsors: one is best, two is doable, a committee is a disaster.

A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain. --Lazarus Long

A committee is a group of the unwilling, chosen from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.

A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours. --Milton Berle

A committee is a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done. --Fred Allen

To get something done a committee should consist of no more than three people, two of whom are absent. --Robert Copeland

To kill time, a committee meeting is the perfect weapon.

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into committees. That'll do them in.

Our age will be known as the age of committees. --Ernest Benn

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. --Barnett Cocks

If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock. --Arthur Goldberg

A committee is an animal with four back legs. --John le Carré

A 'Normal' person is the sort of person that might be designed by a committee. You know: each person puts in a pretty color and it comes out gray. --Alan Sherman

Maintain Quality and sacrifice the other two: it’s your reputation that is at stake.

Character is what you are. Reputation is what people think you are.

Wallpaper Management: a schedule and budget are worked out at the beginning, thumbtacked to the wall, then ignored.

Verify that what you're doing really works -- insanity means doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.

If projects do not have a person clearly in charge (i.e. a champion), progress tends to be slow.

Set up and management of the technology (computers, network, etc.) always takes more time than expected.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

You're not free to succeed unless you're free to fail.

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. --Napoleon Hill

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then prepare to improve on the worst. --Dale Carnegie

The most successful people in life are generally those who have the best information. --Benjamin Disraeli

When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity. --John F. Kennedy

In a hierarchy, an employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence; competency is rewarded with promotion up the management hierarchy until he reaches a position at which he is incompetent. --the Peter Principle

Beware the Professional Automaton, to whom paperwork is more important than the purpose it was designed for. He lives not to serve the public, but the rules, rituals, and forms of the status quo.

Impostors tend to congregate in the mid to upper levels of large organizations, because one impostor cannot spot another impostor.

What do you do with the untrainable in a large organization? They are promoted to the head of the training department.

Enterprise accounting systems are not a substitute for good management ability.

You cannot embarrass an impostor in a large organization; They don't know enough to be embarrassed.

The path to continuous improvement in a large organization is actually a circle.

Nepotism is a career path, not a business strategy.

The incompetent are moved to where they can do the least harm: management. --the Dilbert Principle

After someone has risen to his level of incompetence, he loses the skills that brought him there. So that after awhile, he can't do his old job either. --Peter Principle Corollary

Work is accomplished by those employees who have not reached their level of incompetence. --Peter Principle Corollary

Incompetent people who rise to the top of their profession as CEOs and do a lousy job often go on to other top jobs and screw them up too. --The Pilgrim Principle

All Boards of Directors are incompetent. If they weren't, would they spend their time sitting in meetings when they could be doing something useful?

Humans will make things as complicated as humanly possible. --Bella's Corollary

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. --Tony Hoare

'Quality is everybody's business' becomes 'Quality is nobody's business' if specific responsibilities are not assigned.

Good sales cover a world of evils. Robust present or projected sales are the most addictive drug available in industry today.

Suits only listen to other suits. An MBA trumps an MCSE any day.

The bigger the project, the later and further over budget it goes. Requirements submitted up front, even if they are comprehensive and well-defined, often tend to fade out of the picture as the job grinds on.

The more customers you try to satisfy, the more complex and expensive your system becomes.

Complexity is often said to be the enemy of reliability, stability and performance.

There is no such thing as a perfect system or perfect code, but you cannot hide behind that. There are acceptable and unacceptable levels of software quality.

A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. --George Patton

The nail that sticks up gets pounded down. --Japanese Proverb

Even when software applications are released as 'final,' they're rarely complete.

You can delegate authority, but never responsibility.

Wherever there is great power, there is great responsibility. --John Cumming

If everyone is responsible for something, then in fact no one is responsible for it.

For of those to whom much is given, much is required. --John F Kennedy

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority. --Stanley Milgram

With no power comes no responsibility. --Silent Bob and Jay

You can't give an estimate until you've come up with a design, which requires understanding the requirements, but you won't really understand the requirements until you've finished the project, by which time the requirements will have changed.

What is achievable in system design (architecture) is a function of not only the task to be accomplished but also the technologies that are available.

Design should be complete and minimal (lots of problems are caused by overdesign rather than underdesign).

There are two ways of constructing a software design: make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, or make it so complicated there are no obvious deficiencies. --C.A.R. Hoare's Turing Award lecture

Structure follows strategy (ie: implementing new strategies requires changing the structure).

DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) software design principle: avoid duplication. Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system. --Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas

Abstraction software design principle: Each significant piece of functionality in a program should be implemented in just one place in the source code. --Benjamin Pierce

The Rule of Three software design refactoring rule: code can be copied once, but that when the same code is replicated three times, it should be extracted into a new procedure. --Martin Fowler and Don Roberts

Single Source of Truth principle: normalize data models so that every data element is stored exactly once

Technology: you don't want to be first, but you don't want to be last either.

If the backlog is constant, it is not overwork. If the backlog grows every month, then there is too much work for too little staff.

Yell all you want, but if you don't pay your suppliers, you will eventually get screwed.

Staff will treat their customers in much the same way they are treated themselves.

The customer is always right. --Marshall Field and Harry Selfridge

People can be as big a bug as any software glitch when it comes to getting a new technology to work properly.

A system is only as good as its weakest link.

When one gets near the theoretical limits of a system, every additional 10% increase in performance doubles the systems cost and halves its reliability.

Just because we can do something is not itself a justification to actually do it.

Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them. --Paul Hawken

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. --Ken Hubbard

The four things management can control on a project. - Time - Money (Resources, People) - Scope (Features) - Quality

When Management insists that a project be delivered on time, under budget, & feature complete, the result is the project is a _little_ late, cuts a _few_ features, runs a _bit_ over budget, and has incredibly poor quality, because that's the hardest to measure and easiest to skip.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will use it.

Deliver your software a month late, and your customers will hate you for a month. Deliver bad software on time and your customers will hate you for a year.

Doubling the size of code will quadruple its complexity.

Software will always bear the blame for poor hardware.

You can't 'test in' quality.

Tests can prove the presence of bugs [in a program], but not their absence. --Edsger Dijkstra

Finding bugs in the code means you have bugs in your process. (ie: the design review failed).

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

There is always one more bug. --Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology

User: every time I try to use that feature, it doesn't work. Developer: Then don't do that! --Corollary to Henny Youngman's famous joke

Test early, test often.

If the minimum weren't good enough, it wouldn't be the minimum.

Mediocrity: it takes alot less time and most people won't notice the difference until it's too late.

Remember: Amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic.

The only safeguard of order and discipline in the modern world is a standardized worker with interchangeable parts. That would solve the entire problem of management. --Jean Giraudoux

A leader knows what's best to do; a manager knows merely how best to do it. --Ken Adelman

Good management is better than good income. --Portuguese saying

Efficiency tends to deal with Things. Effectiveness tends to deal with People. We manage things, we lead people.

A leader is most effective when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, his troops will feel they did it themselves. --Lao Tzu c.604BC-531BC

Leadership is doing the right things; Management is doing things right. --Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis

Leadership is not a position. You are not a leader because you have the title of manager. Leadership is something that we earn from followers on a day to day basis.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. --Dwight Eisenhower

Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men -- the other 999 follow women. --Groucho Marx

Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions. --Harold Geenan

Words may show a man's wit, but actions his meaning. --Benjamin Franklin

Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal. --Vince Lombardi

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help, or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. --Colin Powell

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. --Norman Schwarzkopf

You learn far more from negative leadership than from positive leadership. Because you learn how not todo it. And therefore, you learn how todo it. --Norman Schwarzkopf

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. --Colin Powell

Failure is success if we learn from it. --Malcolm Forbes

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. --Stephen Covey

Be the person who steps up. Approach what you do as a leader, not a participant. --George Shaheen

The leader can never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be. He must walk a tightrope between the consent he must win and the control he must exert. --Vince Lombardi

A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done. --Dwight Eisenhower

Managing people involves understanding the strengths, weaknesses, and skillsets of individuals within a work team and assigning people tasks for optimal efficiency. --Dan Bobinski

I learned that a great leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don't want to do and like it. --Harry S. Truman

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it. --Andrew Carnegie

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. --Harry Truman

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. --Epictetus c. 60-120

To lead the people, walk behind them. --Lao Tzu

Behind an able man there are always other able men. --Chinese proverb

When we have begun to take charge of our lives, to own ourselves, there is no longer any need to ask permission of someone. --George O'Neil

When you take charge of your life, there is no longer a need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life. --Geoffrey F. Abert

Let us watch well our beginnings, and results will manage themselves. --Alexander Clark

Just as you would not permit a fellow employee to steal a piece of office equipment, you shouldn't let anyone walk away with the time of his fellow managers. --Andrew Grove

Don't be a time manager, be a priority manager. Cut your major goals into bite-sized pieces. Each small priority or requirement on the way to ultimate goal become a mini goal in itself. --Denis Waitley

The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion. --Dwight Eisenhower

The plan is nothing; the planning is everything. --Dwight Eisenhower

If you aren't getting rejected on a daily basis, your goals aren't ambitious enough. --Chris Dixon

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. --George S. Patton

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it. --Theodore Roosevelt

A computer will not make a good manager out of a bad manager. It makes a good manager better faster and a bad manager worse faster. --Edward Esber

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say.

To help with planning, we need a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter - this is the only way to not incur risk.

We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.

We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it. --Peter F. Drucker

As has been well documented, 60% or more of the cost of software accrues from the in-service support and operation of these systems.

Reduced to its simplest project management is the discipline of maintaining the risk of failure at as low a value as necessary over the lifetime of the project. Risk of failure arises primarily from the presence of uncertainty at all stages of a project.

Project management is the discipline of defining and achieving targets while optimizing the use of resources (time, money, people, etc).

On requirements elicitation: I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell. --Michael Polyani

While the essence of genius is simplicity itself, it is certainly something that cannot be said of the accounting system in our company.

Software is the only engineering discipline in which the equivalent of changing the wing on an airplane constitutes maintenance.

Scenarios are arguably the starting point for all modeling and design. --Alistair Sutcliffe

When we design systems and applications, we are, most essentially, designing scenarios of interaction. --John Carroll

The more creative and flexible an organization is, the cheaper, simpler, and more numerous are its prototypes. --Michael Schrage

Metrics are hard to get on projects which don't keep records. --Alexander's 1st Law of Metrics

Measure twice, cut once. --The Carpenter's Maxim

No matter how many times I cut it, it's still too short. --Carpenter's Other Maxim

Carpenter on a tight schedule: cut to fit; beat into place.

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. --English Proverb

Reinforce Success. --The General's Maxim

We'll cross that bridge ... when it falls down. --The Team Leader's Maxim

A factor present in every successful project and absent in every unsuccessful project is sufficient attention to requirements. --Suzanne & James Robertson

There is simply no substitute for knowing what you're doing. --Jeff Case

No methodology will ever replace bright, dedicated people. --Brad Parkinson

There's no point in being exact about something if you don't even know what you're talking about. --John von Neumann

Requirements in mathematical language are no use unless they are easier to read than the code. --David Parnas

The art of fortifying does not consist in applying rules or following a procedure, but in good sense and experience. --Maréchal Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban

The exception proves the rule - meaning the rule is tested by examining its boundary.

You are remembered for the rules you break. --General Douglas MacArthur

Life is one darn thing after another. --Calvin Coolidge, 19th US President

All projects are iterative - it's just that some managers choose to have the iterations after final delivery.

Perfection is reached not when there's nothing to add, but when there's nothing to take away. --Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Perfection of means, and confusion of goals seem, in my opinion, to characterize our age. --Albert Einstein

Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. --Albert Einstein

Requirements cannot be observed or asked for from the users, but have to be created together with all the stakeholders. --Vesa Torvinen

Negotiation builds a team as well as a set of requirements. --Barry Boehm

Between thought and expression there lies a lifetime. --Bob Dylan

Making good wine is simple but not easy - this applies to requirements, too.

Few people request influence when their world is behaving rationally. As a result, consultants tend to see more than their fair share of irrationality. --Gerald Weinberg

On bad system development practice: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. --George Santayana

We need to be able to work top down, bottom up and middle every which way. --Suzanne Robertson

All generalizations are dangerous - including this one. --Alexandre Dumas

Unarticulated needs are problems or limitations that customers are not even aware of. They are intrinsically more difficult to ascertain and demand real insight into a customer's endeavors. --P.C.Ruffles

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations we can perform without thinking. --Alfred North Whitehead

Investing in putting bad requirements into management tools is a lot like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. --Ivy Hooks

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions. --Claude Levi-Strauss

If the questions don't make sense, neither will the answers. --Kurt Vonnegut, "The Sirens of Titan"

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. --Groucho Marx

There are no menial jobs, only menial attitude. --William John Bennett

If everything's under control, you're going too slow. --Mario Andretti

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me. --Benjamin Disraeali

I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs. --Sam Goldwyn

Never waste a lie when the truth will do. --Jack Clancy

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.

Accuracy is the degree of veracity (ie: closeness of arrows to the bullseye), while precision is the degree of reproducibility (ie: repeatability of the same results)

It is not enough to dream; one must know how to dream. --Charles Baudelaire

A goal is a dream with a deadline. You need to plan to make it.

I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them. --Harry S. Truman

Management by objectives is no better than the objectives.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. --Mark Twain

Management is nothing more than motivating other people. --Lee Iacocca

The simplification of anything is always sensational! --GK Chesterton

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --Edsger Dijkstra

Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer. --Edsger Dijkstra

Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence. --Edsger Dijkstra

Elegance is not a dispensable luxury, but a quality that decides between success and failure. --Edsger Dijkstra

Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California. --Edsger Dijkstra

The secret to programming is not intelligence, though of course that helps. It is not hard work or experience, though they help, too. The secret to programming is having smart friends. --Ron Avitzur

About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. --Edsger Dijkstra

Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon. --Edsger Dijkstra

But excellence is a competitive notion, and that is not what we are heading for: we are heading for perfection. --Edsger Dijkstra

Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning. --Edsger Dijkstra

The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings. --Edsger Dijkstra

Coaches who can outline plays on a black board are a dime a dozen. The ones who win get inside their player and motivate. --Vince Lombardi

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will. --Vince Lombardi

Football is like life -- it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority. --Vince Lombardi

People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society. --Vince Lombardi

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand. --Vince Lombardi

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence. --Vince Lombardi

In actual life every great enterprise begins with and takes its first forward step in faith. --Friedrich Schlegel

In business for yourself, not by yourself. --Ray Kroc

In business, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. --Chester Karrass

Illegitimi Non Carborundum --Latin: Don't let the bastards get you down

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment. --Thomas Carlyle

It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game.

It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.

For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He marks-not that you won or lost, but how you played the game. --Grantland Rice, in his poem "Alumnus Football"

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test. --Elbert Hubbard

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness. --Seneca

It is better to err on the side of daring than the side of caution. --Alvin Toffler

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats. --Howard Aiken

The plural of anecdote is note data. --Roger Brinner

Anything you say to a client regarding program features or estimates can and will be held against you.

Super competence is more objectionable than incompetence because it disrupts the hierarchy. --Dan Lyons

The success of a project will depend critically upon the effort, care and skill you apply in its initial planning. --Gerard Blair

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly. --Francis Bacon

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. --Richard P. Feynman

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. --Richard P. Feynman

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours. --John F. Kennedy

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. --John F. Kennedy

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. --Carl Sagan

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. --Alan Kay

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. --Bill Gates

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. --Publilius Syrus ~100 BC

Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. --Warren Buffett

Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small steps. --David Lloyd George

Even a correct decision is wrong when it was taken too late. --Lee Iacocca

Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult. --Hippocrates 400 BC

Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile. --Stephen R. Covey

Quick decisions are unsafe decisions. --Sophocles 496BC-406BC

Time is a waste of money. --Oscar Wilde

Those who triumph compute at their headquarters a great number of factors prior to a challenge. Little computation brings defeat. How much more so with no computation at all! --Sun Tzu c. 490 BC

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. --John F. Kennedy

If there's a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then nine times out of ten it will. --Paul Harvey

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them. --Laurence J. Peter

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. --Abraham Lincoln

Among the safest courses, the safest of all is to doubt. --Spanish proverb

However good our futures research may be, we shall never be able to escape from the ultimate dilemma that all our knowledge is about the past, and all our decisions are about the future. --Ian Wilson

Treating people with respect will gain one wide acceptance and improve the business. --Tao Zhu Gong 500BC

Vision without action is hallucination. --Manfred Kets de Vries

You are searching for the magic key that will unlock the door to the source of power; and yet you have the key in your own hands, and you may use it the moment you learn to control your thoughts. --Napoleon Hill

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair. --Chinese Proverb

You can't always control the wind, but you can control your sails. --Anthony Robbins

You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do. --AJ Kitt

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. --Mick Jagger

Your brain shall be your servant instead of your master. You will rule it instead of allowing it to rule you. --Charles E. Popplestone

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Prudent, cautious self-control, is wisdom's root. --Robert Burns

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy. --Robert Burns

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all. --Dwight D. Eisenhower

Rule your mind or it will rule you. --Horace

Self-determination is fine but needs to be tempered with self-control.

Self-discipline begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don't control what you think, you can't control what you do. Simply, self-discipline enables you to think first and act afterward. --Napolean Hill

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control - these three alone lead life to sovereign power. --Alfred Lord Tennyson

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. --Ambrose Bierce

Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint. --James Russell Lowell

The control center of your life is your attitude.

As long as I have you there is just one other thing I'll always need - tremendous self-control. --Ashleigh Brilliant

Control your destiny or somebody else will. --Jack Welsh

Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. --Chuang Tzu

Four innate sentiments dispose people to a universal moral sense. These are sympathy, fairness, self-control and duty. --James Q. Wilson

Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters. --Nathaniel Emmons

He who angers you conquers you. --Elizabeth Kenny

He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzche

I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. --William Ernest Henley

Our job is to make and keep commitments.

A project is a collection of value scheduled for realization.

None of us is as smart as all of us.

The traditional project manager wants to freeze the river before going down the rapids.

You cannot push the river.

You plan, deplan, and replan.

Divide et Impera (aka "Divide and Conquer") and Divide et Regna ("Divide and Rule") --cited by Machiavelli as "ancient political maxims"

It is not best to swap horses while crossing a stream. --Abraham Lincoln

I see more and more in our culture where being overworked is a badge of courage. --Robin Bond

Business owners are the most overworked people in America. --Joe Robinson

Never take a path that has no heart in it. You can't lose if your heart is in your work, but you can't win if your heart is not in it. --Carlos Casteneda

The essence of project control is feedback.

Hire brains, not arms and legs.

A project isn't over until the fat check is cashed.

The usefulness and utility of a network equals the square of the number of users. --Metcalfe's Law

You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles. --Princess Bride

It wasn't me and I won't do it again.

Mistake: Changing estimates to be in line with management expectations.

Mistake: Our schedule is good because we used a project-scheduling tool.

We are behind schedule because the customer can't make up their minds.

Mistake: We can cut our testing time out make the delivery date.

Good people make up for bad processes.

MisPerception: Our process is good because it is repeatable.

MisPerception: We don't involve the people doing the work in estimating, because that will increase costs. Besides, they will just pad their estimates.

MisPerception: The sooner we begin coding, the more successful we will be.

MisPerception: We will save more by reusing code, not architecture.

MisPerception: We will worry about the cost of maintenance later. There is no time now.

MisPerception: We don't need to document because we put comments in our code.

You can't blame the project manager. How were they supposed to know?

Trust me; we will deliver everything you want on time and under budget. Honest John's software development

Please, dear God, don't let me f--k up. --Alan Shepard, first US astronaut in space

Failure is not an option. --Gene Kranz, flight director for Mission Control

Failure is not falling down, it is not getting up again.

Always expect the unexpected. --Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 astronaut

Houston, we have a problem. --Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 commander, when the oxygen tanks exploded

It all works out in the end. So if it hasn't worked out yet, it isn't the end.

Things are only impossible until they're not. --Jean Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation

We must have strong minds, ready to accept facts as they are. --Harry Truman

Never underestimate the difficulty of changing false beliefs by facts. --Henry Rosovsky-Harvard

Don't confuse me with facts - my mind is made up. --Erwin Satinsky

Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

If you treat people right they will treat you right... 90% of the time. --Franklin D. Roosevelt

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else's play. --Franklin D. Roosevelt

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. --Franklin D. Roosevelt

One of the advantages of being Captain is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it. --Captain James T. Kirk

I take it the odds are against us and the situation is grim. --Captain James T. Kirk

A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is never sure. -- Proverb

You see but you do not observe. -- Sherlock Holmes

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. -- Proverb

As a general rule, the most successful person in life is the person who has the best information. -- Benjamin Disraeli

The right hand doesn't always know what the left hand is doing. -- Proverb

Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.

For many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Eg: 80% of sales come from 20% of the clients. --The Pareto Principle, aka, the 80-20 rule

In software engineering, 90% of the execution time of a computer program is spent executing in 10% of the code (ie: the bottleneck). --The 90-10 Law

10% of the development time is needed to make a computer system do what it should do. 90% of the time is needed to make it not do what it should not do.

Rule of Credibility: The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time; the last 10% takes the other 90%. --Tom Cargill, Bell Labs

The first 90% of the work is easy, the second 90% wears you down, and the last 90% - the attention to detail - makes a good product. Making software that is simultaneously easy to learn, easy to use, friendly, useful, and powerful takes people with an incredible combination of skills, talent, and artistry working together with intensity and patience --Ron Avitzur

Your software project will be 90% 'done' regardless of when you ask.

Fortune favors the bold. --Virgil, The Aeneid

May fortune favor the foolish. --Captain James T. Kirk

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. --Francis Bacon

Engineers can never earn as much as administrators & sales people.  Proof: Power = work / time (physics) Knowledge = Power (Francis Bacon) Time = Money (Benjamin Franklin) after substitution: money = work / knowledge mathematically, as knowledge approaches zero, money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of work done conclusion: the less you know, the more you make. --Dilbert Salary Theorem

Time is Money. --Benjamin Franklin

Knowledge is Power. --Francis Bacon

Do not blindly assume - it makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'.

Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.

No apologies required. Much better to make no assumptions! --Dan Lyons

All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best. --Occam's Razor

Talk is cheap - the proof is in the pudding.

Chaos, panic, pandemonium - my work here is done.

Believe none of what you hear, and half of what you see. --Benjamin Franklin

Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.

Don't believe everything you think.

Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.

Hard work pays off in the long run, but procrastination pays off right now.

Don't work too hard, because then they'll expect it of you.

Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.

Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.

For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.

Teamwork is essential - it allows you to blame someone else.

Risk Management: The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. Akin to using version 1.0 or waiting for the service pack.

This website may not be idiot proof, but at least it's dimwit resistant.

What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

When you are upto your ass in alligators, it is difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.

Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an email. --Eliot Spitzer

Surround yourself with people smarter than you. --George Steinbrenner

Companies that don't innovate don't survive, so the key to success is driving this innovation. --Ed Zander

Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. --Lord Acton

It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by impregnating nine women.

Accept that some days you'll be the pigeon and some days you'll be the statue.

People behave as they are rewarded, not as they are told. --Robert Millard

The world comprises three kinds of people: a small group who make things happen, a larger group who watch things happen, and the great majority who do not even know what is happening. --Nicholas Murray Butler

Structured programming and object oriented methods are only one side of the equation. You also have the communication gap between the computer and business folk. --John Murphy

In general, you get what you pay for.

Hope is not a strategy. --General Tommy Franks

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. --English Proverb

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

When in doubt, reboot. This solves a tremendous number of software problems.

You can't get pinned down when you are on top. --Wrestler's maxim

One volunteer is better than ten forced men. --African proverb

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. --African proverb

Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet. --African proverb

Bury the hatchet, but don't forget where you buried it.

When you have spoken the word, it reigns over you. When it is unspoken, you reign over it. --Arabian proverb

Speech is silver; silence is golden. --German proverb

Answer fools with silence. --Iranian proverb

Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. --Polonius to Laertes, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene III

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. --Polonius to Laertes, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene III

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. --Polonius, Hamlet, Act 2, Scene II

Brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes. --Polonius, Hamlet, Act 2, Scene II

The palest ink is better than the best memory. --Chinese proverb

Never answer a letter when you are angry. --Chinese proverb

Dig the well before you are thirsty. --Chinese proverb

To remove a mountain, begin by carrying away small stones. --Chinese proverb

Do not fear going forward slowly. Fear only to stand still. --Chinese proverb

He who catches plenty of fish knows where to throw the line. --Chinese proverb

There are three truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth. --Chinese proverb

Better to ask twice than to lose your way once. --Danish proverb

He who would leap high must take a long run. --Danish proverb

He who is ashamed of asking is ashamed of learning. --Danish proverb

A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains. --Dutch proverb

Haste makes waste. --English proverb

Make haste slowly. --Latin proverb

Who is feared by many, fears many. --Hungarian proverb

The believer is happy; the doubter is wise. --Hungarian proverb

Doubt is the key to knowledge. --Persian proverb

He who never doubts doesn't know anything. --Spanish proverb

Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box. --Italian proverb

The nail that sticks up will be hammered down. --Japanese proverb

The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. --Japanese proverb

Don't think there are no crocodiles just because the water is calm. --Malay proverb

200 cattle are under 1 stick, but 200 people are under 200 sticks. --Nigerian proverb

When money speaks, the truth is silent. --Russian proverb

He who has the gold makes the rules. --antithesis to the selflessness of the Golden Rule

The golden rule is a good standard which is further improved by doing unto others, wherever possible, as they want to be done by. --The Platinum Rule

Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. --George Bernard Shaw

Work slowly. All you can ever come to is yourself. --Asian proverb

If you want your dreams to come true, don't sleep. --Yiddish proverb

Develop an infallible technique, then place yourself at the mercy of inspiration. --Zen proverb

God helps those that help themselves. --Ben Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now. --Goethe

Phases of Grief due to Vendor Mgmt Shock - they are late again! Denial - well they must be fixing bugs and finishing testing Bargaining - if I'm patient and wait for them, then I will get a good product (I hope) Guilt - how could I be so stupid to fall for this again! Anger - they should be doing it right the first time, and delivering on time and under budget, and not break anything in the process! Depression - now we'll never meet our team goals, and our customers ultimately are the ones who suffer Acceptance and hope - maybe if we get another vendor....

All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK. --Robert Fulghum

Work Smarter Not Harder Assess everything that needs to be done Work your To-Do List - write it down before you forget, and assign a "by when" date Prioritize - assign an order to the task list, focusing on what needs immediate attention Delegate to the right people - let others help you, picking ones who have the skills Say "No" - don't overload yourself with work that cannot be finished on-time Work in Parallel - where task dependencies permit Follow the Plan - prepared to be resourceful when the unanticipated happens Avoid Distractions - don't overcommunicate with co-workers or check personal email too often Beware Perfectionism - a finished job that's good enough is better than perfectly half-done Communicate - keep clients and workers informed Recognize Diminishing Returns - don't work to the point of exhaustion

What to do when you discover you are Riding a Dead Horse Buy a stronger whip. Change riders. Threaten the horse with termination Say things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse." Appoint a committee to study the horse. Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses. Lower the standards so that dead horses can be included. Appoint an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse. Create a training session to increase our riding ability. Reclassify the dead horse as living-impaired. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost. Declare that "No horse is too dead to beat." Provide additional funding to increase the horse's performance. Do a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster. Declare the horse as "better, faster and cheaper" dead. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

"The Privilege of the Grave" (click here to view) is an article by Mark Twain on the personal costs of exercising Free Speech. Excerpt: "The cost of uttering unpopular opinions is too heavy; it can ruin a man in his business, it can lose him his friends, it can subject him to public insult and abuse, it can ostracize his unoffending family, and make his house a despised and unvisited solitude."

The classic desktop plaque on IBM desks

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  N   E   E U   U R   R O    N   N   S
  N   EEEEE U   U R   R O OO NNNNN   S
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  N   E   E UUUUU RRRRR OOOO N   N   S