Corollary 1: The benefits will be smaller than initially estimated, if estimates were made at all.
Corollary 2: The system finally installed will be completed late and will not do what it is supposed to do.
Corollary 3: It will cost more but will be technically successful.
LAW 2: One advantage of fuzzy project objectives is that they let you avoid embarrassment in estimating the corresponding costs.
LAW 3: The effort required to correct a project that is off course increases geometrically with time.
Corollary 1: The longer you wait the harder it gets.
Corollary 2: If you wait until the project is completed, its too late.
Corollary 3: Do it now regardless of the embarrassment.
LAW 4: The project purpose statement you wrote and understand will be seen differently by everyone else.
Corollary 1: If you explain the purpose so clearly that no one could possibly misunderstand, someone will.
Corollary 2: If you do something that you are sure will meet everyone's approval, someone will not like it.
LAW 5: Measurable benefits are real. Intangible benefits are not measurable, thus intangible benefits are not real.
Corollary 1: Intangible benefits are real if you can prove that they are real.
LAW 6: Anyone who can work effectively on a project part-time certainly does not have enough to do now.
Corollary 1: If a boss will not give a worker a full-time job, you shouldn't either.
Corollary 2: If the project participant has a time conflict, the work given by the full-time boss will not suffer.
LAW 7: The greater the project's technical complexity, the less you need a technician to manage it.
Corollary 1: Get the best manager you can. The manager will get the technicians.
Corollary 2: The reverse of corollary 1 is almost never true.
LAW 8: A carelessly planned project will take three times longer to complete than expected. A carefully planned project will only take twice as long.
Corollary 1: If nothing can possibly go wrong, it will anyway.
LAW 9: When the project is going well, something will go wrong.
Corollary 1: When things cannot get any worse, they will.
Corollary 2: When things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.
LAW 10: Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress.
LAW 11: Projects progress rapidly until they are 90 percent complete. Then they remain 90 percent complete forever.
LAW 12: If project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.
LAW 13: If the user does not believe in the system, a parallel system will be developed. Neither system will work very well.
LAW 14: Benefits achieved are a function of the thoroughness of the post-audit check.
Corollary 1: The prospect of an independent post-audit provides the project team with a powerful incentive to deliver a good system on schedule within budget.
LAW 15: No law is immutable.