How to Speak Project Manager
- When they say, “How’s the work coming along?” they really mean, “I am not missing my lunch break over you.”
- When they say, “I’m glad you were assigned to this,” they really mean, “Nobody else was stupid enough to work on this.”
- When they say, “We need to manage the client top down,” they really mean, “You’re at the bottom of the pecking order and shit flows downstream.”
- When they say, “This project will require your utmost attention,” they really mean, “Don’t screw this up. My review is next week.”
- When they say, “Let’s take this offline to discuss,” they really mean, “You’re making me look stupid in this meeting.”
- When they say, “This looks like a development issue,” they really mean, “They’ll be here all weekend while I go bar hopping.”
- When they say, “This should really go through the Information Architects, first,” they really mean, “I’m supposed to start including these people but I have no idea why.”
- When they say, “We’re going to need to allow time for QA,” they really mean, “Whew! Just bought five more days to get this done.”
- When they say, “It should be quite clear from this Gantt Chart,” they really mean, “I made this deliberately confusing so it looks like I am worth my payrate.”
- When they say, “Let’s do this project in two phases,” they really mean, “I am in over my head so I’m gonna blow off half this job till next quarter.”
Guest co-author, Iain Lanivich
