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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.
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.
You can't give an estimate until you've come up with a design, which requires understanding the requirements, and you won't really understand the requirements until you've finished the project, by which time the requirements will have changed.
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
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 first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time; the last 10% takes the other 90%.
Your software project will be 90% 'done' regardless of when you ask.
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
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 one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent 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
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.
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
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.
Structure follows strategy (ie: implementing new strategies requires changing the structure).
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/Feature
- 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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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"
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
If you treat people right they will treat you right... ninety percent 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
Fortune favors the bold.
--Virgil, The Aeneid
May fortune favor the foolish.
--Captain James T. Kirk
Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.
--Goethe
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.
    The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
    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
    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
    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
    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
    • "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." 
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    Know any Project Management Proverbs, Project Management Truths, Project Management Quotes, or Project Management Laws?

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