Like many of you, I receive a few slices of bacn everyday right alongside my more nutritious items. All Microsoft's newsflashes, my forum summaries, my newsletters automagically moved into a special folder where they only spread their stories for me when they turn up in an All Items mailbox search or are more attractive to my attention more than the 11 other people on the conference call.

However, for some ultimately reasonable reason I've learned to live without, a few slabs of this bacn will get trapped in my inbox. These I usually read (eventually—did you know you can download the IE9 beta??), as a representative sample of their brethren in the deeper lairs. Recently one such errant mail landed in my inbox with the title "What Monty Python Taught Me about the Software Industry". Monty Python at 3:30pm on a Tuesday becomes constructive if I account for it as "blog research", right?

I know this makes me the coconuts and not the horse, but the article waxes well on those things I wish I could so best I convey you to it.

Through the use of five well-known Monty Python stetches, author David "Lefty" Schlesinger portrays five common ailments of software's public face. Each can equally be applied to project management. Here's my interpretation:

1. Prepare for the unforeseen (The Spanish Inquisition)

   Unfortunately, the "Spanish Inquisition" may be the most expected part of a project but you will have a greater chance of survival when you put forth an early effort to capture and mitigate risks and issues.

    

2. Know when you're dead (Bring out yer dead)

   So many many well-planned, exciting projects are born to proud parents that within weeks crawl along and get leprosy. Whether the project was sick from the start or slowly poisoned along the way does not matter. Some projects die and that's ok.

   Often it is much less costly to kill a project in progress than it is to continue. Dead projects should always be sent for a full autopsy and perhaps salvaged for incorporation into future or in flight projects.

    

3. Don't deceive your customers (The dead parrot)

   Your project may have paying customers, or not, but there is at least one person who stands to benefit from your project else it wouldn't exist. Collaborative project management promotes transparency across all aspects of a project. This is one of your best weapons against the Spanish Inquisition.

    

4. "More" is not the same as "Better" (Mr. Creosote [not for the faint of stomach!])

   You've been handed some flavor of this nugget enough in your lives. I'm not going to regurgitate it here!

    

5. Communication (The argument clinic)

   In tandem with #3, collaborative project management requires constant communication. Much of the data entry of project management ought to be automated as much as possible so conversations impart not just information, but ideas.

    

   Link to referenced article with Monty Python videos embedded: http://tinyurl.com/3tmcwae