A collection of quotes oriented to good practices in solution delivery, especially in communication and professional interactions.

1. 60+Thought-provoking Quotes for Solution Delivery Professionals

2. “Transmitting information is easier than creating
understanding.”
— Harold Evans

3. “It marks a big step in your development when you come
to realize that other people can help you do a better job
than you could do alone.”
— Andrew Carnegie

4. “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.”
— George E.P.Box

5. “[Innovation] comes from saying no to 1,000 things to
make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do
too much.We’re always thinking about new markets we
could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can
concentrate on the things that are really important.”
— Steve Jobs

6. “Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but
always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but
to be understood.”
—William Penn

7. “Business analysis is not a job; it is a profession.A person
who does not feel passionate about this role will not
excel.”
— Barbara A.Carkenord

8. “Without requirements, there is no way to validate a
program design; that is, no way to logically connect the
program to the customer’s desires.”
— Benjamin L.Kovitz

9. “Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say
infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you’ll have no
word left when you want to talk about something really
infinite.”
— C.S.Lewis

10. “This paper by its very length defends itself against the risk
of being read.”
—Winston Churchill

11. “I keep six honest serving men (They taught me all I
knew);Their names areWhat andWhy andWhen and How
andWhere andWho.”
— Rudyard Kipling

12. “Don't ever be afraid to admit you were wrong. It's like
saying you're wiser today than you were yesterday.”
— Robert Newell

13. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the
most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
— Charles Darwin

14. “We accomplish what we understand. If we are to
accomplish something together, we need to understand it
together.”
— Attributed to Ron Jeffries

15. “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember;
involve me and I’ll understand.”
— Chinese Proverb

16. “Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are
small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that
much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones
will tend to take care of themselves.”
— Dale Carnegie

17. “Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is
the key to unlocking our potential.”
—Winston Churchill

18. “Don't mind criticism. If it is untrue, disregard it; if unfair,
keep from irritation; if it is ignorant, smile; if it is justified,
it is not criticism -- learn from it.”
— Unknown

19. “Don’t waste your time trying to control the
uncontrollable, or trying to solve the unsolvable, or think
about what could have been. Instead, think about what you
can control and solve the problem you can solve with the
wisdom you have gained from both your victories and your
defeats.”
— David Mahoney

20. “Software requirements are the necessary and sufficient
properties of software that will ensure the solution
achieves what it was designed to accomplish for its users
and for the business.”
— Ellen Gottesdiener

21. “The hardest single part of building a software system is
deciding precisely what to build.”
— Fred Brooks

22. “You have two ears and one mouth. I suggest that you use
them in that proportion.”
— G.K.Chesterton

23. “The biggest problem with communication is the illusion
that it has been accomplished.”
— George Bernard Shaw

24. “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary
so that the necessary may speak.”
— Hans Hoffman

25. “Don’t find a fault, find a remedy.”
— Henry Ford

26. “You don't get paid for the hour.You get paid for the value
you bring to the hour.”
— Jim Rohn

27. “First, solve the problem.Then, write the code.”
— Anonymous

28. “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.Wisdom is
knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”
— Brian O’Driscoll

29. “The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and
nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar
words.”
— Hippocrates

30. “One of the things that may get in the way of people being
lifelong learners is that they’re not in touch with their
passion. If you’re passionate about what it is you do, then
you’re going to be looking for everything you can to get
better at it.”
— Jack Canfield

31. “Success is neither magical or mysterious. Success is the
natural consequence of consistently applying the
fundamentals.”
— Jim Rohn

32. “Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough
meetings are held to discuss it.”
— Anonymous

33. “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”
— John Dewey

34. “You cannot force commitment, what you can do…You
nudge a little here, inspire a little there, and provide a role
model.Your primary influence is the environment you
create.”
— Peter Senge

35. “Good teams become great ones when the members trust
each other enough to surrender the‘me’ for the‘we’.”
— Phil Jackson

36. “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you
can do.”
— JohnWooden

37. “It is well known that when you do anything, unless you
understand its actual circumstances, its nature and its
relations to other things, you will not know the laws
governing it, or know how to do it, or be able to do it
well.”
— MaoTseTung

38. “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which
should not be done at all.”
— Peter Drucker

39. “There are five fundamental qualities that make every team
great: communication, trust, collective responsibility,
caring and pride. I like to think of each as a separate finger
on the fist.Any one individually is important. But all of
them together are unbeatable.”
— Mike Krzyzewski

40. “The model that really matters is the one that people have
in their minds.All other models and documentation exist
only to get the right model into the right mind at the right
time.”
— Paul Oldfield

41. “The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result
of wrong answers.The truly dangerous thing is asking the
wrong questions.”
— Peter Drucker

42. “You can get a great deal done from almost any position in
an organization if you focus on small wins and you don’t
mind others getting the credit.”
— Roger Saillant

43. “We never stop investigating.We are never satisfied that we
know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on
to another question.This has become the greatest survival
trick of our species.”
— Desmond Morris

44. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
— Leonardo daVinci

45. “Don't just fix the mistakes -- fix whatever permitted the
mistake in the first place.”
— NASA Rules for Better Software

46. “If you don’t know how to do something, you don’t know
how to do it with a computer.”
— Anonymous

47. “Agile ... is an attitude, not a technique with boundaries.
An attitude has no boundaries, so we wouldn’t ask‘can I
use agile here’, but rather‘how would I act in the agile way
here?’ or‘how agile can we be, here?’”
— Alistair Cockburn

48. “Good communication does not mean that you have to
speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs...
Simple and clear go a long way.”
— John Kotter

49. “But there’s no substitute for getting smarter faster.And
the way you get smarter is to screw around vigorously.Try
stuff. See what works. See what fails miserably. Learn.
Rinse. Repeat.”
—Tom Peters

50. “You have to look at leadership through the eyes of the
followers and you have to live the message.What I have
learned is that people become motivated when you guide
them to the source of their own power and when you
make heroes out of employees who personify what you
want to see in the organization.”
— Anita Roddick

51. “At its simplest, a shared vision is the answer to the
question,‘What do we want to create?’”
— Peter Senge

52. “A good test of the value of paperwork is to see if there is
someone waiting for what is being produced.”
— Mary Poppendieck

53. “A team is a small number of people with complementary
skills who are committed to a common purpose,
performance goals, and approach for which they hold
themselves mutually accountable.”
— Katzenbach and Smith

54. “Knowing that perfect communications are impossible
relieves you of trying to reach that perfection. Instead, you
learn to manage the incompleteness of communication.
Rather than try to make the requirements document or
the design model comprehensible to everyone, you stop
when the document is sufficient to the purpose of the
intended audience.”
— Alistair Cockburn

55. “A toolmaker succeeds as . . . the users of his tools succeed
with his aid. However shining the blade, however jeweled
the hilt, however perfect the heft, a sword is tested only by
cutting.”
— Fred Brooks

56. “Anything you need to quantify can be measured in some
way that is superior to not measuring it at all.”
—Tom Gilb

57. “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not
everything that can be counted counts.”
— Albert Einstein

58. “The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great
ideas.The role of a leader is to create an environment in
which great ideas can happen.”
— Simon Sinek

59. “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and
you will help them become what they are capable of
becoming.”
—Von Goethe

60. “If you hide your spark, bury your ideas, keep your
questions and notions from the team, you have hurt them
as badly as if you had stolen a laptop and fenced it on
eBay.”
— Seth Godin

61. “When you have nothing, what’s the first thing you try to
do?You try to make a connection and have a relationship
that gives you an opportunity to do something for
someone else.”
— Adam Rifkin

62. “An appropriate and complete requirements specification
does nothing to ensure a successful implementation;
however, it makes it possible.”
— Daryl Kulak & Eamonn Guiney

63. “Before you attempt to set things right, make sure you see
things right.”
— Blaine Lee

64. “A methodology is the conventions that your group agrees
to.‘The conventions your group agrees to’ is a social
construction. It is also a construction that you can and
should revisit from time to time.”
— Alistair Cockburn

65. “Nothing is impossible, we just don't know how to do it yet.”
— L.L.Larison Cudmore

66. http://PracticalAnalyst.com
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