Make an extensive table of project ‘deliverables’. Label one column ‘as requested’. Create another column labelled ‘could be’. Make each ‘could be’ wild and woolly!

Tom Peters, 1999

When a risk occurs, with some ingenuity, this may open up an opportunity, and conversely when pursuing an opportunity there will be associated risks. Risks are generally deemed acceptable if the possible gains exceed the possible losses.

Rory Burke, 1999

“What we are looking for is managers who are awake enough to alter the world as they find it, to make it harmonize with what they and their people are trying to accomplish.”

Tom DeMarco The Deadline

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, 1995

Project managers rarely lack organisational visibility, enjoy considerable variety in their day-to-day duties, and often have the prestige associated with work on the enterprise’s high-priority objectives.

Meredith & Mantel

The project manager must be able to develop a fully integrated information and control system to plan, instruct, monitor and control large amounts of data, quickly and accurately to facilitate the problem-solving and decision-making process.

Rory Burke, 1999

If it is not documented, it doesn’t exist ... As long information is retained in someone’s head, it is vulnerable to loss.

Louis Fried 1992

For a project plan to be effective it must equally address the parameters of ‘activity time’ and ‘activity logic’. This logical relationship is required to model the effect schedule variance will have down stream in the project.

Rory Burke, 1999

No major project is ever installed on time, within budget, with the same staff that started it.

Edwards, Butler, Hill & Russell, 1997

You can’t keep it all in your head. Project control tools are an absolute necessity for the control of large projects.

Louis Fried 1992

‘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, 1997

The project manager is expected to integrate all aspects of the project, ensure that the proper knowledge and resources are available when and where needed, and above all, ensure that the expected results are produced in a timely, cost-effective manner.

Meredith & Mantel

Project management can … be defined as a way of developing structure in a complex project, where the independent variables of time, cost, resources and human behaviour come together.

Rory Burke, 1999

Momentum is a fragile force. Its worst enemy: p-r-o-c-r-a-s-t-i-n-a-t-i-o-n. Its best friend: a deadline (think Election Day). Implication no. 1 (and there is no no. 2): Get to work! NOW!

Tom Peters, 1999

The functional groups should not be allowed to stretch out the project for the sake of improvement, refinement, or the investigation of the most remote potential risk.

Meredith & Mantel

Why do so many professionals say they are project managing, when what they are actually doing is fire fighting?

Colin Bentley, 1997

“Some of the most flowery praise you hear on the subject of teams is only hypocrisy. Managers learn to talk a good game about teams even when they’re secretly threatened by the whole concept.”

Tom DeMarco The Deadline

Like organic entities, projects have life cycles. From a slow beginning they progress to a buildup of size, then peak, begin a decline, and finally must be terminated. (Also, like other organic entities, they often resist termination.)

Meredith & Mantel

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.

Napoleon Hill

“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 The Deadline

So you’re not a “sales guy” (or gal). B-a-l-o-n-e-y. We’re all “sales guys” … if – if! – we care enough about our project.

Tom Peters, 1999

You may con a person into committing to an unreasonable deadline, but you cannot bully them into meeting it.

Edwards, Butler, Hill & Russell, 1997

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, 1995

Don’t do anything you don’t have to do.

Louis Fried 1992

Project management is like juggling three balls - time, cost and quality. Programme management is like a troupe of circus performers standing in a circle, each juggling three balls and swapping balls from time to time.

Geoff Reiss

I am not interested in...making sure that you (the employee) are here, that you are giving us so many hours a day. We need people who will deliver a final result.

Ricardo Semler, 2003

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes ... but no plans.

Peter Drucker

The conditions attached to a promise are forgotten and the promise is remembered.

Edwards, Butler, Hill & Russell, 1997

The P in PM is as much about ‘people management’ as it is about ‘project management’.

Cornelius Fichtner

A good plan can help with risk analyses but it will never guarantee the smooth running of the project.

Bentley & Borman 2001

Ensure your documentation is short and sharp and make much more use of people-to-people communication.

Bentley & Borman 2001

A well-constructed project management workshop should give people a solid foundation to build on.

Bentley & Borman 2001

A task is not done until it is done.

Louis Fried 1992

If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn't thinking.

General George Patton Jr

Project proposals, business cases or cost benefit analyses are probably being massaged (either by underestimating costs or timeframes or by being very optimistic about the benefits) so projects will be approved.

Bentley & Borman 2001

Reconnaissance memoranda should always be written in the simplest style and be purely descriptive. They should never stray from their objective by introducing extraneous ideas.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Know when to cut your losses if necessary. Don't let your desire to succeed be the enemy of good judgment. If Napoleon had left Moscow immediately, he may have returned with a salvageable army.

Jerry Manas, 2002

[At the end of the project.] Lavish credit on anyone and everyone who helped you the least bit.

Tom Peters, 1999

As has been taught to teachers of the Harvard Business School, the art of asking good questions is often the most important element of managerial tasks.

Parte Bose 2004

Projects progress quickly until they become 90% complete; then remain at 90% complete forever.

Edwards, Butler, Hill & Russell, 1997

Each completed task establishes certain parameters and imposes constraints on the next task.

Louis Fried 1992