[ Note 2017-12-29: the news.ycombinator.com discussion of this post is unusually useful. You may want to read it first.] [ Note 2018-09-01: I presented an updated and shortened version of this talk at SREcon EMEA 2018. There's a recording and some slides that you might enjoy. The text below is much more detailed though, if you want to actually implement the advice.] I did a talk at work about the various project management troubles I've seen through the years. People seemed to enjoy it a lot more than I expected, and it went a bit viral among co-workers. It turns out that most of it was not