1. Projects with realistic budgets and timetables don’t get approved.
2. The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the progress report.
3. A user is somebody who rejects the system because it’s what he asked for.
4. The difference between project success and failure is a good PR company.
5. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it.
6. Every failing, overly ambitious project, has at its heart a series of successful small ones trying to escape.
7. A freeze on change melts whenever heat is applied.
8. You understood what I said, not what I meant.
9. If you don’t know where you’re going, just talk about specifics.
10. If at first you don’t succeed, rename the project.
11. Everyone wants a strong project manager – until they get him.
12. Only idiots own up to what they really know (thank you to President Nixon).
13. The worst project managers sleep at night.
14. A failing project has benefits which are always spoken of in the future tense.
15. Projects don’t fail in the end; they fail at conception.
16. Visions are usually treatable.
17. Overly ambitious projects can never fail if they have a beginning, middle and no end.
18. In government we never punish error, only its disclosure.
19. The most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.
20. A realist is one who’s presciently disappointed in the future.