I have a colleague who uses the title as one of his social media tag lines.  It always made me laugh – but it also causes me to let out a heavy sigh.  I’ve seen it far more as reality in running projects than I have as just an amusing tagline.

Projects usually take one of two tracks.  If they are planned well and managed closely, they generally run well and, while there are surprises, the project manager and the project sponsor/leadership get the results they wanted and are reasonably happy with them.  Then, of course, there are projects on the opposite end of the spectrum – the ones that make every project manager cringe when the e-mail or IM comes in from the sponsor.  These are the projects that were overloaded from the start in one way or another.  If you haven’t seen one as a PM, you probably haven’t been managing long enough yet. Continue reading →