New PM Maxims

Todd is Principal Implementation Management Consultant at BI-SAM and author of "No Project Management by Powerpoint".

  Communications Management   Talent Management  

Ah, the clever project management adage! We’ve all heard them…

• “A project gets a year late one day at a time.”
• “The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time; the last 10% takes the other 90%.”
• “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”

…and dozens more on websites, blogs and coffee mugs. Many have been repeated so often that they may actually have become incorporated into the PMBOK. So what’s a few more? Over the last several years, my own professional encounters have led me to develop a few new gems of project management wisdom, destined (I believe, anyway) to one day find their special place on project status reports worldwide. So here goes…

“No Project Management by Powerpoint!”
How many times have we been asked to just put together a “high-level timeline” slide for an executive presentation only to find out that the manager has somehow affected the time/space continuum with his magic scheduling mouse to now deliver the project six months early? A click here, some Smart Art there and…voila! Four weeks of planning your carefully sequenced and resourced activities has become a big blue diamond labeled “Phase 2 – TBD”. Slide the mouse to the left and…poof! You’ve cut a year from your schedule!

Now, as…

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