Famous last words in project management.

[abhijit]

"We can't afford the time to test, so let's release this to UAT for now."

"We will make one small change. What harm can that do?"

"Your vacation is postponed until further notice".

"This is a two week assignment".

[Torc]

"This will come in on time and on budget".

[abhijit]

"Our QA process ensures that the final release has zero bugs."

[visualAd]

"Customer: requirements are fine. Make it clown. MAKE IT NOWW!!!!"

[NeedSomeAnswers]

"The project plan delivery date comes in too late, so what i am going to do is move the Regression testing earlier so it happens at the same time as the development."

[Hack]

"You guys start coding and I'll go find out what the customer wants."

[InvisibleDuncan]

"If it was easy to spec, it must be easy to code."

[FunkyDexter]

"Put FunkyDexter on it"

[abhijit]

"Put FunkyDexter on it"

[abhijit]

"You guys start coding and I'll go find out what the customer wants."

OR

"You write the code, I'll make sure that the customer wants that".

[techgnome]

True requirement from the trenches:
"Project X is just like Project K... Just take all the K custom stuff out and re-use it."

-tg

[wossname]

Boss: "Hey thanks for doing the Linux release this morning."
Coder: "No problem."
Boss: "Oh yeah before I forget, Joe in Sales has promised our new customers can have a Solaris build by tomorrow night, can you rush that through for me?"
Coder: *twitch*
Boss: "Uhh, are you OK? It's just a small change right? Right? Hey, what are you going to do with that? Hey c'mon now, put the axe down and we'll ARRRRRGGHH!!"

[abhijit]

"This project could have been delivered on time but..."

[CADman]

Top 25 Engineer's Terms and Expressions
(What they say versus what they mean)

A number of different approaches are being tried. (We are still guessing at this point.)
Close project coordination. (We sat down and had coffee together.)
An extensive report is being prepared on a fresh approach. (We just hired three punk kids out of school.)
Major technological breakthrough! (It works OK; but looks very hi-tech!)
Customer satisfaction is believed assured. (We are so far behind schedule that the customer will take anything.)
Preliminary operational tests were inconclusive. (The darn thing blew up when we threw the switch.)
Test results were extremely gratifying! (Unbelievable, it actually worked!)
The entire concept will have to be abandoned. (The only guy who understood the thing quit.)
It is in process. (It is so wrapped in red tape that the situation is completely hopeless.)
We will look into it. (Forget it! We have enough problems already.)
Please note and initial. (Let's spread the responsibility for this.)
Give us your interpretation. (We can't wait to hear your bull.)
See me or let's discuss. (Come to my office, I've messed up again.)
All new. (Parts are not interchangeable with previous design.)
Rugged. (Don't plan to lift it without major equipment.)
Robust! (Rugged, but more so)
Light weight. (Slightly lighter than rugged)
Years of development. (One finally worked)
Energy saving. (Achieved when the power switch is off.)
No maintenance. (Impossible to fix)
Low maintenance. (Nearly impossible to fix)
Fax me the data. (I'm too lazy to write it down.)
We are following the standard! (That's the way we have always done it!)
I didn't get your e-mail. (I haven't checked my e-mail for days.)

[Hack]

"It seems like a perfectly simple application to me."

[techgnome]

"That should be pretty simple to do, right? Great!"

[GaryMazzone]

"Don't ask the Business Analyst any questions just make it work."

[abhijit]

"In any case the customer is never satisfied, so just give him what is presently working and we will let someone else worry about the payment on the project"

[Hack]

"QA?! Are you nuts. The last thing we need to do is waste time running code through QA. Just put it into production, and I'll mark off another milestone met!"

[abhijit]

Team inputs are completely unnecessary for informing the customer about the status of the project.

[EntityX]

(What they say versus what they mean)
"That should just take a day or two, right? Great!" (You should be able to get that done sometime before you die.)

[abhijit]

"QA?! Are you nuts. The last thing we need to do is waste time running code through QA. Just put it into production, and I'll mark off another milestone met!"

"Also, we better stay away from all the pesky QA girls, who keep on delaying the project unnecessarily."

[moti barski]

20 more days

[visualAd]

Customer: our data repository is in a consistent format (the data is spread among 100 Excel workbooks and the only thing consistent about them is the file extension)

[visualAd]

Customer: We need to up-size our application. (sharing an Excel workbook doesn't work with 250 users)

[visualAd]

Developer: Where are your requirements?
Project manager: In my head.

[Max Peck]

"Fix all the bugs in version 4.1 and add all new functionality to version 4.3 and have it at-least as stable as 4.1 for release at the end of April"...

This was said by a manager we had who was totally losing his mind back in 2006. There were about 200 bugs in the 4.1 release and 4.3 had major features to be added. This was an enterprise sized solution with 7 developers and 4 Q/A. We walked out of that meeting looking for the men in white coats - I kid you not!

-Max

[visualAd]

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable request to me. Although he should have added "do it now clown" to the end of that request.

[RhinoBull]

...There were about 200 bugs in the 4.1 release...

Bravo to developers! Well done. Bravo to QA Team as well! Well done.
I would be embarrassed to even mention it...

[kareninstructor]

To learn Java (or whatever language) we are going to learn as we go in project XYZ.

[techgnome]

"We need a customization that gives us fields A, B, C, and D. But we need it to also sum the data using the standard fields X, Y, Z and L,M,N & O."
This one made me want to crawl under my desk and cry.

-tg

[abhijit]

To learn Java (or whatever language) we are going to learn as we go in project XYZ.

Back in 2002, I learned Oracle the same way. I was working primarily on SQL Server & Access, but the project demands required me to learn Oracle. Didn't turn out to be that bad.