Many times I'm sitting in a meeting or driving along thinking about projects I'm working on, or even better riding my bike far away from home and a thought comes to me about how to wrap up a complex concept in a simple phrase.
Here are some that have come to the surface lately...
- In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is - Yogi Berra. Yogi has lots of PM quotes. But this is one of my favorites. I can''t tell you the number of times I've heard someone speak about how "we could do this," or "we could do that."
- Never Confuse Effort with Results - if you're measuring effort as your progress, you're not measuring the right thing
- Brevity is the Soul of Wit — Lord Polonius to Hamlet. Keeping it simple works for all forms of communication. Just as well for project plans, presentations, and all things related to delivering outcomes from projects. But it must be "simple enough" and not too simple.
- Trying is just a noisy way of saying no progress — Warren Bennis. I hear this all the time. "We'll try to have that server up and running by Tuesday." "I'll try to get that order closed by month end." This goes along with Hope is not a Strategy.
- Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat —Sun Tzu. You need both a Plan and a Schedule. The Plan tells you what deliverable are needed to produce the needed business or technical capabilities. The Schedule tells you when the work to produce those deliverables needs to be performed.
- Plans are nothing; planning is everything — Dwight D. Eisenhower. This is a famous, often misused and mis-quoted quote. It is not a excuse for not planning. It is a direct order to plan. The Plan is the Strategy for Successfully delivering the value from a project. Plans changes. That's the role of a Plan. Anyone suggesting otherwise is not a Project Manager.
- When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people — Chinese Proverb. Know your planning horizon.
- It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be — Isaac Asimov. "What is Plan B?"
- The facts are always friendly, every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true —Carl Rogers. Measure progress ONLY with measures of Physical Percent Complete. The passage or time, the consumption of resources, and the estimates of progress from the provides of progress are NEVER credible assessments.
