BOFH: Shove your project managementry up your mailbox! "So it's agreed then. You'll codify the project and I'll reach out to the developers for the SDK that you need?" the latest IT project manager asks. "By 'codify' you mean I'll write the program and by 'reach out' you mean email?" I respond. "Yes." "Why not just say email?" "I... because I might phone them." "So why not …
While baseball bats may be more comfortable to use, they lack the depth of sound that a cricket bat provides
Oh I don't know about that now, the 'oul aluminium (ah-lumi-mun to 'merkins) baseball makes a pleasant sound when it strikes something.
My own personal favourite is a 6lb copper faced dead blow hammer, the copper face is particularly useful as it doesn't create sparks which could accidentally set fire to the PM's petrol soaked clothes.
"The rules of cricket say "the ball" has to cross the boundary, not part of it. Thus the whole PM needs to cross. If the ball splits in half then the umpire must signal a dead ball. If the PM splits in half then the PM is declared DOA at the hospital."
Well if "the ball" has to cross the boundary, the only part of the PM which has to cross is his testicle. The rest is irrelevant, attached or otherwise.
What if the PM has two testicles? He doesn't, because all PMs are Hitlers, and Hitler has only got one ball (the other is in the Albert Hall). Oh look, Godwin's Law!
What if the PM is female? Same rules apply: all PMs are Hitlers and therefore have one ball.
An aluminium baseball bat will produce a thoroughly satisfying *PING* when impacted upon a miscreant's head...
Maybe it's a generational thing, but I always thought the sound of an aluminum bat rather wimpy. For my money, there's nothing like the sound of a good old ash Louisville Slugger catching the ball (or a PM's head) right on the sweet spot, about halfway between the label and the tip of the bat -- that "home run sound" as many ballplayers like to call it.
I had a fellow take a swing - two actually - at me with a stick with a nail through it. He connected neither time. After I took the stick away from him and removed the nail from it - converted it to toothpicks more or less, he concluded I might be a bit irritated and ran like a hare. I didn't even put him in the hospital.
These all have their place, no doubt, but I find them a bit unwieldy in the confined space of a typical meeting room.
Consider the advantages a good half brick has to offer. Easily concealed in a laptop bag, where it could be mistaken for a power supply. Still heavy enough that it can do serious damage at the end of a round-arm hay-maker. Easily wielded, no matter how constricted the space or how close the consultant has managed to get. And so easily blameable on the builders doing modifications down the corridor.
"There's been a terrible accident! He's tripped and hit his head on this half brick the builders left lying around..."
Bring two of them and you have a "competitive tendering process" ready-made.
I appreciate its a tech have a bash at PMs site. But this is somewhat bollocks and doesnt align anything like to PRINCE2. The PM doesnt write the business mandate or magic their own budget. It would be the business dictating these and agreeing to the project deliverables, cost and timescales.
Part of the PMs job is to break down all the bullshit that techs and marketing people love, into what people can understand and deliver.
So yeah a good laugh but not reality at all and you would just look like a tool in front of a professional PM.
Really? Really??? Do you really, seriously, honestly-cross-that-shrivelled-thing-that-might-be-a-heart believe that Project Managers actually add anything (except time and misery) to a project. Wow. That's... touching. Really touching.
"...align anything like to PRINCE2" - and you claim to try to make things understandable?
"The PM doesnt write the business mandate or magic their own budget" - or, um, do anything useful?
Maybe I'm unlucky and have never worked under a decent project manager. Or the majority of PMs are genuinely crap at anything other than marketing doublespeak.
Arrghh every time I hear the new phrase for 'email' - "reach out and touch base", I keep thinking of the start of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus.
"Low hanging fruit" I keep thinking of them in the garden of eden. Arrgghh mine eyes!
"I'm all over this project" conjures up images of the speaking party as a spider splicer.
Since when did excel spreadsheets become artefacts? Sounds like something from an Indiana Jones film.
I dread to think if these people ever tried to build a house - A homo sapien container implementation with interfaced functional area componentry, implemented in brick.
"Think outside the box" was a rather cool expression for about a week; then, suddenly, everybody and their cat was using it.
Nowadays, it's one of my favorite expressions because I can use it to determine whether or not someone's had a single original thought in their lives. As soon as they say "think outside the box", I can be fairly sure that nothing else they say is worth listening to.
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