Fear No Project Blog – Focusing on the Management Side of Projects

I talked last week about the risky business of project management. Stress seems to be the mother’s milk of managers. In the middle of dealing with a new set of bugs, overdue outsourced code, or the list of additional requirements recently faxed from marketing, a little bit of humor helps you to cope.

What makes a project management joke funny or a PM proverb amusing is the shared bond of “been there, done that” and survived. Humor helps a project manager diffuse charged situations and shows that he or she “gets it” when asking the team to stretch or commit or work smarter. With this in mind, I spent some productive time surfing the web for good project manager jokes and sayings.  Fortunately, others have plowed this field before me and I borrowed from their collections with credit and appreciation given when possible. Here goes:

"Project management will become a recognized profession when jokes are made about the practitioners." — www.asapm.org/asapmag/a_humor.asp

Compiled by CRV Consulting:

The project manager walks into his boss’ office and says, "Here is the bottom line budget needed for the success of the project."
The boss says, "What can you do for half the money?"
The project manager says, "Fail."
The boss says, "When can you get started?"
The project manager says, "I think I just did."
— from Jokester.com

A project manager, hardware engineer and software engineer were in a car heading down a hill when the brakes failed. The driver managed to get it stopped by using the gears and a convenient dirt track.
All three jumped out and after peering under the car the hardware engineer said, "I see what the problem is and with this handy roll of duct tape I think I can fix it good enough to get us to the next town". The project manager quickly interrupted, "No, no, no. Before we do anything we need to decide on a vision for our future, figure out a plan and assign individual deliverables". At which point the software engineer said, "You know what, I think we should push the car back up to the top of the hill and see if it happens again".
 — http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2004/06/14/155399.aspx

A project manager was out walking in the countryside one day when a frog called out to him. He bent down, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog poked its head out of his pocket and said, "Hey, if you kiss me I’ll turn into a beautiful princess, and I’ll stay with you for a week as your mistress."

The project manager took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it, and put it back into his pocket.

The frog called out once more, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I’ll stay with you for as long as you wish and do absolutely anything that you want." Again, the project manager took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and put it back.

Finally, the frog demanded, "What’s the matter? You can turn me back into a beautiful princess, and I’ll stay with you forever and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?"

The project manager replied, "Understand, I’m a project manager. I simply don’t have time for a girlfriend. But a talking frog…that’s cool."

— http://www.businessballs.com

Compiled or Written by Mike Harding Roberts:

• Any project can be estimated accurately (once it’s completed).
• At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.
• A user is somebody who tells you what they want the day you give them what they asked for.
• Right answers to wrong questions are just as wrong as wrong answers to right questions.
• 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.
• The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of meeting the date is forgotten.
• A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.
• The more ridiculous the deadline the more money will be wasted trying to meet it.
• There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.
• A project gets a year late one day at a time.
• 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.

Zelda Jones, PMP. You may enjoy Zelda’s entire article Finding Humor in Project Management

A tourist walked into a pet shop and looked 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 onto the monkey and handed the animal 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 monkeys are only a few hundred dollars. Why did hat one cost so much“?

The shopkeeper answered, "Ah, that monkey can program in C very fast with no bugs. Well worth the money."
…
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".

I hope you experienced at least a small smile as you read these bits of humor. If you have a favorite project manager joke, humorous anecdote, or proverb, please share.