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Rules In Project Management

As cynical as this sounds, most of these actually apply.
  1. You cannot produce a baby in one month by impregnating nine women.
  2. The same work under the same conditions will be estimated differently by 10 different estimators or by one estimator at 10 different times.
  3. The most valuable and least used word in a project manager's vocabulary is "No".
  4. You can con a sucker into committing to an unreasonable deadline, but you can't bully him into meeting it.
  5. The more ridiculous the deadline, the more it costs to try to meet it.
  6. The more desperate the situation, the more optimistic the situatee.
  7. Too few people on a project can't solve the problems - too many create more problems than they solve.
  8. You can freeze a user's specs, but he won't stop expecting.
  9. Frozen specs and the abominable snowman are alike: they are both myths and they both melt when sufficient heat is applied.
  10. The conditions attached to a promise are forgotten and the promise is remembered.
  11. What you don't know hurts you.
  12. A user will tell you anything you ask - nothing more.
  13. Out of the many possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient one is the only correct one.
  14. The first activity in any project is to identify the scapegoat.
  15. Things take longer than they do.
  16. The first 90% of tasks in a project will consume 90% of the allocated resource.
    The remaining 10% of tasks in a project will consume the other 90% of the allocated resource.
  17. Nine women CAN have a baby in one month.
  18. A 'piece of cake' is any unit of work, regardless of scope, for which someone else is totally responsible.
  19. A meeting is no substitute for progress.
  20. If you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there.
  21. An estimating technique:
    1. Have 2 experts make independent estimates (or one expert estimate it twice).
    2. Add the 2 estimates together. If the experts used different units of measurement, user the higher of the two.
    3. Round to the next higher unit of measurement as follows:
      1. Minutes round to hours
      2. Hours round to days
      3. Days round to weeks
      4. Weeks round to months
      5. Months round to years
      6. Years round to careers (ie, the project will terminate this many project manager's careers - before being cancelled)
  22. No matter what has to be done immediately, there is always something else that has to be done first.
  23. If it was not written down, it was never said.
  24. Hindsight is the only exact science.
  25. A committee is a group of people that meet for hours to produce a result known as minutes.
  26. Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have your way.
  27. The proper course of action can always be determined from subsequent events.
  28. If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you made the attempt.
  29. Parkinson and Murphy are both alive and well - in your project.
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