🛰️a dozen of NASA's 100 rules for project managers

Jerry Madden collected these at NASA Goddard over years, a hundred of them. these are the twelve I keep coming back to.

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Rule 5: Vicious, despicable, or thoroughly disliked persons, gentlemen, and ladies can be project managers. Lost souls, procrastinators, and wishy-washies can not.

from the source, section 1. the harshest one in the whole document and also the truest

Rule 6: A comfortable project manager is one waiting for his next assignment or one on the verge of failure. Security is not normal to project management.

Rule 7: One problem new managers face is that everyone wants to solve their problems. Old managers were told by senior management, "solve your own darn problems, that is what we hired you to do".

this is the one i needed to hear five years ago

Rule 13: A manager who is his own systems engineer or financial manager is one who will probably try to do open heart surgery on himself.

Rule 20: You cannot watch everything. What you can watch is the people. They have to know you will not accept a poor job.

short one, section 4 (People)

Rule 26: If you have someone who doesn't look, ask, and analyze; ask them to transfer.

Rule 33: If you have a problem that requires additional people to solve, you should approach putting people on like a cook who has under-salted the food.

add slowly, taste as you go. brooks' law in kitchen form

Rule 46: Remember, it is often easier to do foolish paperwork that to fight the need for it. Fight only if it is a global issue which will save much future work.

Rule 50: Being friendly with a contractor is fine, being a friend of a contractor is dangerous to your objectivity.

easier said than followed once you've worked with someone for two years

Rule 69: Never ask management to make a decision that you can make. Assume you have the authority to make decisions unless you know there is a document that states unequivocally that you can't.

Rule 82: Wrong decisions made early can be recovered from. Right decisions made late cannot correct them.

the whole list in one line honestly

Rule 100: Never make excuses; instead, present plans of actions to be taken.

Or start a list of your own. Free, it takes a minute.

Related lists

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Corita Kent's ten rules for students and teachers (1967)

Cal Newport's four rules of Deep Work

the 5e rules everyone at the table forgets mid-fight