It’s not what you know. It’s what you do with what you know. 

Some folks don’t know the right ways to run a project. Or close a set of books.  Or manage staff. And they can be educated. 

But other folks do.  

They know they should test.  They know you can’t overhaul your major system in two months and not expect to have problems.  They know people have limits and lives that need to be respected. 

But they also have reasons why they can’t do all those good things. 

We promised management. We promised the customers.  We promised the board. It’s just for a short time.  We can fix that in phase two. 

Reasons, reasons and more reasons why they can’t do things the right way. 

Reasons don’t change reality.   

If you’re managing a team of 20 and digging into detailed spreadsheet data, you’re not going to keep your project moving. 

If your users aren’t comfortable before you go live, they’re not going to be supportive when things go wrong. 

If your team needs to work 14 hours a day for the last week to “just get it in”, their work will not be top quality. 

All this and more will still be true.  

No matter how good your reasons are.