pm-lotus by Howard Vaughan

Over the years I’ve had the good fortune to observe, lead and coach dozens of project teams in all sorts of organizations in a variety of countries and cultures. It struck me that while we have a multitude of overwhelming specifics and references for sound project management, (think PMBOK, PRINCE2 etc.), many project managers would benefit from simply absorbing a few basic realities—or, put another way:

Universally Useful Mantras

So some time ago I started wondering if we could condense recognized best practices in project management into a simple set of guiding principles. My answer – YES, I think we can.

A few simple rules

So here are my own personal mantras:

1 –  Ambiguity kills Projects

2 –  Credibility requires Detail

3 –  No Truth, no Trust

4 –  Uncertainty is Certain

5 –  Satisfaction is not Guaranteed

I believe these realities hold true irrespective of the nature or complexity of project. They reflect the strongest forces for shaping success or failure on most projects, most of the time.

I’ll be expanding and evangelizing my perspectives on each of these in future blogs… so stay tuned!

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