Working ten hour days allows you to fall behind twice as fast as you could working five hour days. – Issac Assimov
Trying to manage a project without project management is like trying to play a football game without a game plan. – K. Tate
A project without a critical path is like a ship without a rudder. – D. Meyer
Running a project without a WBS is like going to a strange land without a roadmap. – J. Phillips
If, on your team, everyone’s input is not encouraged, valued, and welcome, why call it a team? – Woody Williams
If you have never recommended cancelling a project, you haven’t been an effective project manager. – Woody Williams
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. – Fred Brooks
It is always easier to talk about change than to make it. – Alvin Toffler
Project management is like juggling three balls – time, cost and quality. Program management is like a troupe of circus performers standing in a circle, each juggling-three balls and swapping balls from time to time. – G. Reiss
It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things – Machiavelli
A project is complete when it starts working for you, rather than you working for it. – Scott Allen
Any Idiot can point out a problem …. A leader is willing to do something about it! – Tony Robbins
Project management is … The art of creating the illusion that any outcome is the result of a series of predetermined, deliberate acts when, in fact, it was dumb luck. – Harold Kerzner
If it is not documented, it doesn’t exist … As long as information is retained in someone’s head, it is vulnerable to loss. – Louis Fried
‘Don’t use a sledgehammer to crack a walnut’, but equally don’t agree important things informally where there is a chance of a disagreement later over what was agreed. – Colin Bentley
Why do so many professionals say they are project managing, when what they are actually doing is fire fighting? – Colin Bentley
“Get the right people. Then no matter what all else you might do wrong after that, the people will save you. That’s what management is all about.” – Tom DeMarco
No matter how good the team or how efficient the methodology, if we’re not solving the right problem, the project fails – Woody Williams
The P in PM is as much about ‘people management’ as it is about ‘project management’. – Cornelius Fichtner
If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn’t thinking. – General George Patton Jr
Know when to cut your losses if necessary. Don’t let your desire to succeed be the enemy of good judgment. – Jerry Manas
Projects progress quickly until they become 90% complete; then remain at 90% complete forever. – Edwards, Butler, Hill & Russell
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man – George Bernard Shaw
Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I’ll understand – Chinese Proverb
Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better – Samuel Johnson
If an IT project works the first time, it was a very small and simple project. – Cornelius Fitchner
“Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups” Wethern’s Law of Suspended Judgement – Paul Duvall
“It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.” – Winston Churchill
