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Table of Contents: Project Management Jokes

• Project Management Truisms
• Glossary of Planning Terms
• A Prayer for the Stressed
• Motivation and Morale
• Decoding the Jargon
• Coding Monkeys
• Phrases for appraisals
• Financial Obfuscation
• The Perfect Worker
• Interpreting Employment Ads
• Balloonists
• Monkeys
• Software Development Cycle
• The Genie
• Project Management Proverbs
• Top 10 Reasons NOT to Use Project Management
• The Plan - or how NOT to report progress .....
• The planning miracle
• What does a Project Manager DO?
• The Buzz Phrase Generator
• Project Manager Performance Appraisal

Project Management Truisms

1. It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by impregnating nine women.

2. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it.

3. You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it.

4. At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.

5. The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the situatee.

6. A problem shared is a buck passed.

7. A change freeze is like the abominable snowman: it is a myth and would melt anyway when heat is applied.

8. A user will tell you anything you ask, but nothing more.

9. Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is the correct one.

10. What you don't know hurts you

11. There's never enough time to do it right first time but there's always enough time to go back and do it again.

12. The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the sweetness of making a date is forgotten.

13. I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.

14. What is not on paper has not been said.

15. A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.

16. If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven't understood the plan.

17. If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.

18. Feather and down are padding, changes and contingencies will be real events.

19. There are no good project managers - only lucky ones.

20. The more you plan the luckier you get.

21. A project is one small step for the project sponsor, one giant leap for the project manager.

22. Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when.

23. If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.

24. Everyone asks for a strong project manger - when they get one, they don't want one.

25. Overtime is a figment of the naïve project manager's imagination.

26. Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance.
27. The sooner you begin coding the later you finish.

28. Metrics are learned men's excuses.

29. For a project manager, overruns are as certain as death and taxes.

30. Some projects finish on time in spite of project management best practices.

31. Fast - cheap - good - you can have any two.

32. There is such a thing as an unrealistic timescale.

33. The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale.

34. A two-year project will take three years; a three-year project will never finish.

35. When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be considered complete.

36. A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well-planned project only twice as long as expected.

37. Warning: dates in a calendar are closer than they appear to be.

38. Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.

39. There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.

40. A project gets a year late one day at a time.

41. If you're 6 months late on a milestone due next week but really believe you can make it, you're a project manager.

42. No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirements.

43. Yours won't be the first to.

44. Activity is not achievement.

45. Managing IT people is like herding cats.

46. If you don't know how to do a task, start it, then ten people who know
less than you will tell you how to do it.

47. If you don't plan, it doesn't work. If you do plan, it doesn't work either. Why plan!

48. The person who says it will take the longest and cost the most is the only one with a clue how to do the job.

49. The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.

50. The nice thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.

51. Good control reveals problems early - which only mean you'll have longer to worry about them.

Glossary of Planning Terms

This is a glossary of regularly used terms and phrases associated with project planning, compiled to ensure that all Project and Programme members have a common understanding of the complicated jargon used by the planning team to confuse and delude Project Managers, Programme Managers and anyone involved in signing timesheets.

Critical Path Analysis

Shortest route between work and the local pub

Barchart

Price List at the local pub

Float

Remaining Beer kitty

End Stage Assessment

Who's round is it next

Mid Stage Assessment

If I slow up drinking Len will get the next round in

Progress Report

How much beer left in the glass?

Plan

Blank sheet of paper to carry round

Milestone

Paul buys a round

PERT Chart

Grading of best looking girls in the pub

Time Analysis

Can we get another pint in before last orders?

Earned Value

The Pay Cheque

BCWS

Beer Consumption When Sober

BCWP

Beer Consumption When Pissed

ACWP

Always Check When Paid

Timesheet

Is that the time?!!! oh sheeeet

Slip

Being first at the bar

GANTT

Get Absolutely Nowhere Telling Truth

A Prayer for the Stressed

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
the courage to change the things I cannot accept,
and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those I had
to kill today because they got on my nerves.

And also, help me to be careful of the toes I step on
today as they may be connected to the feet I may have
to kiss tomorrow.

Help me to always give 100% at work....
12% on Monday
23% on Tuesday
40% on Wednesday
20% on Thursday
5% on Fridays

And help me to remember...
When I'm having a really bad day,
and it seems that people are trying to wind me up,
that it takes 42 muscles to frown, 28 to smile and
only 4 to extend my arm and smack someone in the mouth!

Motivation and Morale

Once upon a time, a British company and a Japanese company decided to have a competitive boat race on the River Thames. The Japanese won by a mile.

The British firm became very discouraged and morale sagged. Senior Management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found and a project team was set up to investigate the problem and recommend the appropriate action.

Their conclusion: the Japanese team had eight people rowing and one person steering. The British team had one person rowing and eight people steering. Senior Management immediately hired a consultant company to do a study of the British team's structure. Millions of pounds and several months later they concluded that too many people were steering and not enough rowing.

To prevent losing to the Japanese next year, the team structure was changed to four 'Steering Managers', three 'Senior Steering Managers' and one 'Executive Steering Manager'. A performance and appraisal system was set up to give the person rowing the boat more incentive to work harder and become a key performer.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles. The Executive Steering Manager of the British companywas heard to say: "Next year that lazy SOB is going to have to row a lot harder!" But his underlings laid off the rower for poor performance, sold off the oars, cancelled all capital investment for new equipment and halted development of a new boat. They gave high performance awards to the consultants and distributed the money saved to Senior Management.

Decoding the Jargon

Here's a set of definitions to help you understand what those Checkpoint Reports are really telling you !

Essentially complete

It's half done.

We predict...

We hope to God!

Risk is high, but within acceptable ranges of risk

100:1 odds, or with 10 times over budget using 10 times the people we said we'd employ.

Potential show stopper.

The team has updated their resumes.

Serious but not insurmountable problems.

It'll take a miracle...

Basic agreement has been reached.

The @##$%%'s won't even talk to us.

Results are being quantified.

We're massaging the numbers so they will agree with our conclusions.

Task force to review.

Seven people who are incompetent at their regular jobs have been loaned to the project

Not well defined at this time.

Nobody's even thought about it.

Still analysing the requirements.

See previous answer.

Not well understood.

Now that we've thought about it, we don't want to think about it anymore.

Requires further analysis and management attention.

Totally out of control!

Results are promising

Turned power on and no smoke detected -- this time...

Elements will be phased in gradually as the software interface matures

It's late!

Unacceptable stretching-out of the time scale

It's late!

Still in the early phase of the learning curve

New

The requirement was changed and the programme concluded

Cancelled

Experiencing transient malfunctions

Going wrong

Conceptually configured in several variations

Modified

A structured interface with the government on an inter-departmental basis

Money!

Coding Monkeys

A tourist walked into a pet shop and was looking at the animals on display. While he was there, another customer walked in and said to the shopkeeper, "I'll have a C monkey please." The shopkeeper nodded, went over to a cage at the side of the shop and took out a monkey. He fitted a collar and leash, handed it to the customer, saying, "That'll be £5,000."

The customer paid and walked out with his monkey. Startled, the tourist went over to the shopkeeper and said, "That was a very expensive monkey. Most of them are only a few hundred pounds.  Why did it cost so much?"  The shopkeeper answered, "Ah, that monkey can program in C - very fast, tight code, no bugs, well worth the money."

The tourist looked at a monkey in another cage.  "Hey, that one's even more expensive! £10,000! What does it do?"

"Oh, that one's a C++ monkey; it can manage object-oriented programming, Visual C++, even some Java.  All the really useful stuff," said the shopkeeper.

The tourist looked around for a little longer and saw a third monkey in a cage of its own. The price tag around its neck read £50,000. The tourist gasped to the shopkeeper, "That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does it do?"

The shopkeeper replied, "Well, I haven't actually seen it do anything, but it says it's a project manager".

Phrases for appraisals

Short of an apt phrase for the annual appraisal of your staff? Try some of these for size (reputedly from RN Officer Fitness Reports):

1. His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of curiosity.
2. I would not breed from this Officer.
3. This Officer is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definitely won't-be.
4. When she opens her mouth, it seems that this is only to change whichever foot was previously in there.
5. He has carried out each and every one of his duties to his entire satisfaction.
6. He would be out of his depth in a car park puddle.
7. Technically sound, but socially impossible.
8. This Officer reminds me very much of a gyroscope - always spinning around at a frantic pace, but not really going anywhere.
9. This young lady has delusions of adequacy.
10. When he joined my ship, this Officer was something of a granny; since then he has aged considerably.
11. This Medical Officer has used my ship to carry his genitals from port to port, and my officers to carry him from bar to bar.
12. Since my last report he has reached rock bottom, and has started to dig.
13. She sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them.
14. He has the wisdom of youth, and the energy of old age.
15. This Officer should go far - and the sooner he starts, the better.
16. In my opinion this pilot should not be authorised to fly below 250 feet.
17. The only ship I would recommend this man for is citizenship.
18. Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap
19. This man is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.
20. Only occasionally wets himself under pressure.

Financial Obfuscation

Up against it on the costs front?  Need to face the Project Board and explain?  This little (old) gem should help you better than saying 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'!

From evidence given by an MoD expert to the Commons Expenditure Committee on the cost of the Multi-role combat aircraft (shows its age, eh - it's been called the Tornado since 1971 ....)

"Although these costs are higher than the costs which were reported in your previous paper, the fact that in the present development 3(A) phase which I described we are keeping to these cost levels (and with most of these increases in cost was associated a defined extension of the programme) has led the three countries, even though they have not sought approval from their governments and will not be seeking approval for this level of cost until the next stage has to be authorised in a few months' time, to accept this as a realistic cost with a well-defined programme, somewhat longer, as I said earlier, than the programme to which the previous cost attached."

Phew!  That helpful little thing in MS Word reckons that lot has a Flesch-Kincaid reading ease of 0.0 (idea is to get 60-70/100) !

The Perfect Worker

An appraisal for the perfect worker:

1 Bob Smith, my assistant programmer, can always be found
2 hard at work in his cubicle. Bob works independently, without
3 wasting company time talking to colleagues. Bob never
4 thinks twice about assisting fellow employees, and he always
5 finishes given assignments on time. Often he takes extended
6 measures to complete his work, sometimes skipping coffee
7 breaks. Bob is a dedicated individual who has absolutely no
8 vanity in spite of his high accomplishments and profound
9 knowledge in his field. I firmly believe that Bob can be
10 classed as a high-caliber employee, the type which cannot be
11 dispensed with. Consequently, I duly recommend that Bob be
12 promoted to executive management, and a proposal will be
13 executed as soon as possible.

Addendum:

That idiot was standing over my shoulder while I wrote the report sent to you earlier today.  Kindly re-read only the odd numbered lines.

Interpreting Employment Ads

Having difficulty finding the right words to convey just what your project is like when placing those recruitment advertisements?  Here's a set of terms that may help!

Competitive Salary

We remain competitive by paying less than our competitors.

Join Our Fast Paced Company

We have no time to train you.

Casual Work Atmosphere

We don't pay enough to expect that you will dress up.

Must be Deadline Oriented

You will be six months behind schedule on your first day.

Some Overtime Required

Some time each night, some time each weekend.

Duties will vary

Anyone in the office can boss you around.

Must have an Eye for Detail

We have no quality control.

Seeking Candidates with a Wide Variety of Experience

You are replacing three people who just quit in disgust.

Problem Solving Skills a Must

You are walking into a company in perpetual chaos. Your first task is to find out what is going on.

Requires Team Leadership Skills

You will have the responsibilities of a manager without the pay or respect.

Good Communication Skills

Management communicates poorly, so you have to figure out what they want and do it.

Self starter

You will get absolutely no support from management or your co-workers.

Fast paced environment

We need somebody that can tolerate a slave driving type A manager.

Highly motivated individual

We want someone who will put in long hours without extra pay.

Team player

We need a lackey and a yes man with good organisational skills - our system is in chaos and we need someone to bail us out.

Some travel required

You won't see your spouse or kids for 6 months.

Flexible schedule

You are free to set your own hours as long as you are at work from 7:30 to 5:30 Monday through Friday.

Co-ordinate your work hours with your co-workers

You'll be working second shift.

Pay based on experience

We'll hire the cheapest worker we can find.

Stock options

We can't afford to pay you what you're worth so we'll give you this worthless paper.

Company bonus plan

Our company doesn't make a profit.

Comp time

We're going broke and can't afford to pay overtime.

Excellent opportunity for advancement

We canned the guy that would have been your boss, you'll be expected to do his job too.

Leadperson

You'll be doing your manager's job.

Review and pay rise every 6 months

You will be underpaid, we'll throw you a bone occasionally so you don't leave.

Contract to direct

We're too cheap to hire somebody with your experience, we'll bring you in as a contractor in hopes that you will like working here and be willing to work for less money.

Balloonists

A woman in a hot air balloon was lost.  She reduced altitude and spotted a man below.  She descended a bit more and shouted:

"Excuse me, can you help?  I promised a friend I would meet her an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man replied: "You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above alkali desert scrub habitat, 2.7 miles west of the Colorado River near one of the remnant populations and spawning grounds of the razorback sucker."

"You must be a biologist" said the balloonist.

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help so far."

The man below responded: "You must be a project manager."

"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well, said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air.  You made a promise to someone that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem.  The fact is, you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow it's now my fault!"

Monkeys

Software Development Cycle

1. Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free.
2. Product is tested. 20 bugs are found.
3. Programmer fixes 10 of the bugs and explains to the testing department that the other 10 aren't really bugs.
4. Testing department finds that five of the fixes didn't work and discovers 15 new bugs.
5. Repeat three times steps 3 and 4.
6. Due to marketing pressure and an extremely premature product announcement based on overly-optimistic programming schedule, the product is released.
7. Users find 137 new bugs.
8. Original programmer, having cashed his royalty check, is nowhere to be found.
9. Newly-assembled programming team fixes almost all of the 137 bugs, but introduce 456 new ones.
10. Original programmer sends underpaid testing department a postcard from Fiji. Entire testing department quits.
11. Company is bought in a hostile takeover by competitor using profits from their latest release, which had 783 bugs.
12. New CEO is brought in by board of directors. He hires a programmer to redo program from scratch.
13. Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free...

The Genie

As with all well run projects the Project Manager and his Technical Design Authority and Chief Systems Analyst were having a lunch time stroll along the beach when they happened on a small brass lamp.  Well, you know the rest: they rubbed it and the ever grateful genie appeared, but when confronted with the three of them shared the traditional three wishes as one each.  

The ever eager TDA claimed first go and requested a South Sea Island with sweet music, swaying palm trees with matching supply of lei clad girls delivering endless Tequila Sundowners. "No problem" said the Genie, and with a quick flash and a cloud of blue smoke the TDA disappeared.

Then came the CSA, a much simpler chap, who merely wished to be locked in the sample room of the Guinness St James' Brewery in Dublin with a guarantee of a self-regenerating liver. "No problem" said the Genie, and with a quick flash and a cloud of blue smoke the CSA disappeared.

Then came the Project Manager.  "Simple!" said he.  "I want those other two back at their desks by 1:30."

Project Management Proverbs

1. It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by impregnating nine women.
2. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it.
3. You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it.
4. At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.
5. The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the situatee.
6. A problem shared is a buck passed.
7. A change freeze is like the abominable snowman: it is a myth and would anyway melt when heat is applied.
8. A user will tell you anything you ask, but nothing more.
9. Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is the correct one.
10. What you don't know hurts you
11. There's never enough time to do it right first time but there's always enough time to go back and do it again.
12. The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the sweetness of making a date is forgotten.
13. I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.
14. What is not on paper has not been said.
15. A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.
16. If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven't understood the plan.
17. If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.
18. Feather and down are padding, changes and contingencies will be real events.
19. There are no good project managers - only lucky ones.
20. The more you plan the luckier you get.
21. A project is one small step for the project sponsor, one giant leap for the project manager.
22. Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when.
23. If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.
24. Everyone asks for a strong project manger - when they get them they don't want them.
25. Overtime is a figment of the naïve project manager's imagination.
26. Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance.
27. The sooner you begin coding the later you finish.
28. Metrics are learned men's excuses.
29. For a project manager overruns are as certain as death and taxes.
30. Some project finish on time in spite of project management best practices.
31. Fast - cheap - good - you can have any two.
32. There is such a thing as an unrealistic timescale.
33. The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale.
34. A two-year project will take three years, a three year project will never finish.
35. When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be considered complete.
36. A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well planned project only twice as long as expected.
37. Warning: dates in a calendar are closer than they appear to be.
38. Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.
39. There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.
40. A project gets a year late one day at a time.
41. If you're 6 months late on a milestone due next week but really believe you can make it, you're a project manager.
42. No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirement
43. Yours won't be the first to.
44. Activity is not achievement.
45. Managing IT people is like herding cats.
46. If you don't know how to do a task, start it, then ten people who know less than you will tell you how to do it.
47. If you don't plan, it doesn't work. If you do plan, it doesn't work either. Why plan!
48. The person who says it will take the longest and cost the most is the only one with a clue how to do the job.
49. The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.
50. The nice thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.
51. Good control reveals problems early - which only means you'll have longer to worry about them.
52. It's hard to remember your job is to drain the swamp when you're up to your a--e in alligators.

Top 10 Reasons NOT to Use Project Management

10. Our customers really love us, so they don't care if our products are late and don't work.
9. I know there is a well-developed project management body of knowledge, but I can't find it under this mess on my desk.
8. All our projects are easy, and they don't have cost, schedule, and technical risks anyway.
7. Organising to manage projects isn't compatible with our culture, and the last thing we need around this place is change.
6. We aren't smart enough to implement project management without stifling creativity and offending our technical geniuses.
5. We might have to understand our customers' requirements and document a lot of stuff, and that is such a bother.
4. Project management requires integrity and courage, so they would have to pay me extra.
3. Our bosses won't provide the support needed for project management; they want us to get better results through magic.
2. We'd have to apply project management blindly to all projects regardless of size and complexity, and that would be stupid.
1. We figure it's more profitable to have 50% overruns than to spend 10% on project management to fix them.

The Plan - or how NOT to report progress .....

In the beginning was THE PLAN.
And then came The Assumptions.
And The Plan was without substance.
And The Assumptions were without form.
And darkness was upon the face of the Workers.

And they spoke among themselves, saying,
'It is a crock of s--t, it stinks.'
And the workers went unto their Supervisors, and said,
'It is a pail of dung, and none may abide the odour thereof.'

And the Supervisors went unto their Managers, saying
'It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong,
such that none may abide it.'

And the Managers went unto their Directors, saying,
'It is a vessel of fertiliser, and none may abide its strength.'

And the Directors spoke among themselves saying one to another,
'It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong.'

And the Directors went to the Vice-Presidents, saying unto them,
'It promotes growth, and it is very powerful.'

And the Vice-Presidents went to the President, saying unto him,
'This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigour of the company, with powerful effects.'

And the President looked upon The Plan, and saw that it was good.
And The Plan became policy.
And that is how S--t happens.

The Planning Miracle

What does a Project Manager DO?

Project Managers are a fortunate lot, for, as everyone knows, a project manager has nothing to do; that is, except...

• To decide what is to be done;
• to tell somebody to do it;
• to listen to reasons why it should not be done,
• why it should be done by somebody else,
• or why it should be done in a different way;
• and to prepare arguments in rebuttal that shall be convincing and conclusive.

And then:

• To follow up to see if the thing has been done;
• to discover that it has not been done;
• to enquire why it has not been done;
• to listen to excuses from the person who did not do it;
• and to think up arguments to overcome the excuses.

And then:

• To follow up a second time to see if the thing has been done;
• to discover that is has been done incorrectly;
• to point out how it shall be done;
• to conclude that as long as it has been done it might as well be left as it is;
• to wonder if it is not time to get rid of the person who cannot do a thing correctly;
• to reflect that in all probability any successor would be just as bad, or worse.

And finally:

• To consider how much more simply and better the thing would have been done had he done it himself in the first place;
• to reflect satisfactorily that if he had done it himself he would have been able to do it right in 20 minutes and that as things turned out, he himself spent two days trying to find out why it is that it has taken somebody else three weeks to do it wrong.
• To realise that such an idea would have a very demoralising effect on the project team, because it would strike at the very foundation of the belief of all employees that a project manager has nothing to do.

(Thanks to Park Place Training Newsletter for that one ...)

The Buzz Phrase Generator

Stuck for a suitably meaningless expression to bamboozle that know-it-all idiot who picked on you in that meeting the other day? Try this for size!

Pick any three-character number, then choose the appropriate combination of words from each column in turn, e.g. 204 = Systematised Management Mobility. Voilà! Your rival has to spend ten minutes working out what that means, while you get on with your presentation in peace!

Project Manager Performance Appraisal

Here are some more well-turned phrases to help you judge your charges' capabilities: