Monthly Archive: December 2014

I have always been enamored with quotation and sayings that left me laughing for hours and could make me smile whenever I recall the said quotes.

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:

Project Management Quotes
• 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.
• 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.

Money has always been seen as the best reward a firm would give to their employees for a job well done. Nowadays, this kind of method is not frequently practiced because of the lack of funds as well as for the money-saving efforts of firms.

What’s a manager to do? Relax, Take it easy. Money is not the only thing that could be used as a source of motivation by managers. In the article entitledManagement Style: Three ways to say thanks when raises aren’t an option, it showcased three methods which could help managers when money is not an option as a type of reward for the workers.

I decided to come up with my own guidelines which could somehow give managers an idea on how to manage their team if there is limited resources. Here are some of the things included in my guidelines:

The Limited Managing Guide
• Be resourceful – this is the time wherein a manager needs to maximize their resources and at the same time use anything that would yield favorable results to the team.
• Do your research – research would be able to save you and the team lots of time in terms of finding out relevant information. It means that a little research and background check of the team members would be able to help the manager find out a common activity that would further develop the working relationship of the team.
• Use your imagination – the key to reaching out to your team members might not need to be expensive. Use you imagination and let your creative side take-over. The more imaginative and unique, the more chances of making it memorable.
• Integrate new and old ideas – this kind of approach would certainly make team members at their edge because a combination of these ideas would only mean one thing: effectivity.

These are just some of the guidelines that could help project managers in thinking of ways to motivate their team when the simple solution of financial rewards is not available. These methods would more or less guide PM in their difficult path of cost-saving.