This post is a few days old, but I just caught it today while catching up on my blog reading.  The funny thing about the post is that after my last project I could easily replace “Sales force” with “project management” and it would all still apply.  During my last project, meetings that involved the PM and the client would typically float between a 6 and 7 on the scale.  Level 5 was the norm on the project.  To be perfectly honest, I don’t recall a single Level 1 meeting during the entire project.

Again, this is my modified list.  Check out the original here.

Project Management Level 1
Description: Calm.
Conditions: PM presented all the material prepared by developers without alteration.

Project Management Level 2
Description: Gentle.
Conditions: PM presented some technical inaccuracies that nobody else noticed. For instance, “our database is written entirely in Microsoft’s awesome C# language”.

Project Management Level 3
Description: Moderate.
Conditions: PM made some statements you wouldn’t agree with. For instance: “our application is totally using AJAX for an awesome user experience”, when in fact only four web pages in 100 use AJAX.

Project Management Level 4
Description: Squirming in seat.
Conditions: PM is making some bold claims for scenarios you’ve never tested. For instance: “our software can scale to 10 million users without breaking a sweat”.

Project Management Level 5
Description: It’s getting ugly.
Conditions: The customer just asked for a feature of such magnitude that only quantum computers cooled by liquid nitrogen could do the job. PM replied: “yes, we have that in the plans for next quarter”.

Project Management Level 6
Description: Total WTF.
Conditions: PM described some feature of the software you’ve never heard about. Perhaps this was something they dreamed, but you know they’ll expect you to build it. Quickly.

Project Management Level 7
Description: Apocalypse Now!
Conditions: PM presented screen shots of a “shipping application” where the screen shots were actually UI sketches built in Photoshop by a tattooed designer named Pablo who never came back to work after last year’s Burning Man festival.