Project Management Useful Analogies (or Jokes)?

Some of these you may have heard, some perhaps are new. Sometimes helping people to understand requires an analogy or "funny" anecdote. Let us know if any of these work for you! My comments are embedded here for you also in brackets [].

1. It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by impregnating nine women. [my favorite - throwing bodies at the problem is usually not the right answer]

2. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it.
[watch it when someone says that someone "JUST" has to do X]

3. You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him/her into meeting it.
[when they squirm about a date, figure out how to help them and note the risk]

4. At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.
[break the work into "bite-sized chunks"]

5. A user will tell you anything you ask, but nothing more.
[requirements gathering - yeah, good luck with that. better to observe them in action, and show them prototypes and let them react.]

6. Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is the correct one.
[true!]

7. What you don't know hurts you
[also known as "the devil is in the details"]

8. The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the sweetness of making a date is forgotten.
[read that one again]

9. Everyone asks for a strong project manger - when they get one, they don't want one.
[amen!]

10. Fast - cheap - good - you can have any two.
[see other posts on the triple constraint]

Thanks to www.funny-haha.co.uk for these! See that site for many more!