• No major project is ever installed on time, within budgets, with the same staff that started it. Yours will not be the first. 
  • Projects progress quickly until they become 90% complete, then they remain at 90% complete for ever.
  • One advantage of fuzzy project objectives is that they let you avoid the embarrassment of estimating the corresponding costs.
  • When things are going well, something will go wrong.
    • When things can’t just get any worst, they will.
    • When things appear to be going better you have overlooked something,
  • If project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.
  • No system is ever completely debugged: Attempts to debug a system inevitably introduce new bugs that are even harder to find.
  • A carelessly planned project will take three times longer to complete than expected, a carefully planned project will take only twice as long.
  • Project teams detest progress reporting because it vividly manifests their lack of progress.
  • Project teams are happy to scrap work, but only after it has been planned, designed and partially implemented.
  • No program is so simple that it can’t be issued with bugs in it.