Aesop’s guide to Acquisition Laws

The following is a sample from John Krieger’s excellent article in NCMA Magazine. There’s more at the link. I’ll forgo the indentation in the quotes below. I think Goodhart and Brook’s Laws are my favorite.

Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Brooks’ Law: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”

Cheops’ Law of Project Management: “No project is ever completed on time or within budget.”

Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fi ll the time available for its completion.”

Parkinson’s Law of Triviality: “The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum [of money] involved.”

Murphy’s Law: “If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way.”

Meskimen’s Law: “There’s never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.”

Sayre’s Law: “In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.”

Hick’s Law: “The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.”

Gall’s Law: “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”

Sutton’s Law: “In diagnosing a problem, one should go straight to the most likely diagnosis.”

Putt’s Law: “Technology is dominated by two types of people—those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand.”

Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

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