What Does it Take to be a Project Manager

A Poem by Geoff Hingle (with some inspiration from Rudyard Kipling)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all doubt you;
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can plan-and not make plans your master;
If you can think-and not make, thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to see the requirements you’ve captured
Twisted in implementation to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the designs you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your risks
And mitigate them  with one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
to serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with VP’s-nor lose the common touch,
If neither teammates nor customers can hurt you,
If all count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And-which is more- you’ll be a Project Manager who gets a project done!