Somewhere, someplace, someone is running a a project: that will run to schedule; that will hit every milestone; where everything will slot firmly and effortlessly into place; and, of course, it'll be one where people go to bed at sensible hours, where these good folks never think of working weekends. I yearn to be part of one of these dream teams. C'mon somebody, pick me, pick me! Please!

By the way, can it be one of those projects where there are more people doing things than actually supervising this time? It's de rigeur to have one guy digging the hole and umpteen others all telling him what to do.

I know from long, hard, uphill experience, that there's only two ways a project can go: bad, or very bad. "Yours was bad? but that's great! Mine was very bad. So bad, in fact, that not even the open air sacrifice of a goat could save it. Wish mine had been bad. God, you're so lucky"

When it comes to projects, stick the gant charts as deep as you can in the shedder, stick the MS project disc on a piece of string and use it as a biurd scarer in the garden. Better still, just chuck it away. There's only two types of projects anyone in business needs to know about: Stable Door and Tourette's.

Stable Door - project has gone live before it should have...long before. Nothing's in place. And it's not working to plan....even remotely. There's soul-searching, there's shouting, there's the sound of heads hitting keyboards, then out of the fog, a phrase appears, it's the one to freeze all hearts - "We need a quick fix". No, please, shoot me.

Quick fixes are the WMDs of all projects: they do not exist. No they don't, in spite of the enormous amounts of energy and industry spent looking. They don't exist. They never have, they never will. I have more faith in being present at a UFO landing in Hyde Park, than of a quick fix fixing, and not tying the, already difficult to unpick, knot even tighter

Tourette's - you know in advance the project is going down the pan "It's beyond the clifff edge. We're in mid-air with this one". A Tourette's project is a fervent belief that only a prolonged stream of consciousness rants can save it. Nothing else can. So season the now comatose project with imprecations, flash fry with copious amounts of swear words, add a strong splash of whine, finally serve with sour grapes and misery guts. Blame everyone else, of course.