It’s time to put a temporary lid on the serious stuff and make way to fun and very entertaining project management quotes from Stephen Seay’s blog, ProjectSteps. I have two recent posts which also tackled some of these project management quotes. These posts are Random Thoughts on Project Management and Random Thought in Project Management Part 2. In my opinion, quotes are a different way of providing us knowledge through a fun and entertaining way. Texts which could illicit a response from other people (regardless of the emotion) is something that I consider as an effective one.

Without much ado, here is another collection of project management quotes:

  • 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.
  • Good project managers admit mistakes: that’s why you so rarely meet a good project manager.
  • 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.
  • The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time the last 10% takes the other 90%.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • If you can interpret project status data in several different ways, only the most painful interpretation will be correct.
  • A project gets a year late one day at a time.
  • A project isn’t over until the fat check is cashed.
  • Powerful project managers don’t solve problems, they get rid of them.