Government
20 cynical project management tips
Here's your guide to the seamy underbelly of IT project management.
![krigsman-michael-author.jpg](https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/3e12b94f2810fdd855a6d2de90007db14b694a6b/2019/08/21/20fa0fef-eaac-4c13-8660-6c9ddfbcf9f3/krigsman-michael-author.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&frame=1&height=192&width=192)
Ever wonder why so many projects fail? Well, here's your guide to the seamy underbelly of IT project management.
From Tony Collins, who writes a well-researched blog on government-related IT failures in the UK:
- Projects with realistic budgets and timetables don't get approved
- The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the progress report
- A user is somebody who rejects the system because it's what he asked for
- The difference between project success and failure is a good PR company
- Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it
- Every failing, overly ambitious project, has at its heart a series of successful small ones trying to escape
- A freeze on change melts whenever heat is applied
- You understood what I said, not what I meant
- If you don't know where you're going, just talk about specifics
- If at first you don't succeed, rename the project
- Everyone wants a strong project manager - until they get him
- Only idiots own up to what they really know (thank you to President Nixon)
- The worst project managers sleep at night
- A failing project has benefits which are always spoken of in the future tense
- Projects don't fail in the end; they fail at conception
- Visions are usually treatable
- Overly ambitious projects can never fail if they have a beginning, middle and no end
- In government we never punish error, only its disclosure
- The most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest
- A realist is one who's presciently disappointed in the future
[Seamy underbelly photo by Michael Krigsman.]