Murphy’s Law is an old adage that states: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”.

I was struck by the relevance of the many variants of Murphy’s Law to web project management the other day, during an excellent presentation by a colleague. So I dug a little bit deeper. After reading many people’s takes on the subject and a lot of appreciative nodding at my screen, I settled on my favourite five:

1. Nothing is as simple as it appears (or put another way: everything takes longer than you think).
2. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the most damaging one will go wrong.
3. If something simply can’t go wrong, it will anyway.
4. Solutions breed new problems.
5. If everything appears to be going well, something has been overlooked.

Five great rules of thumb for all web project managers out there, soon to be displayed loud and proud above the coffee machine at Cubeworks HQ.