Project Management Tips: Details Can Be Devilish

The story of James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary offers a powerful lesson for project teams: obsession with documentation can doom a project to mediocrity or failure.

The OED lesson:

• The Problem — What should have taken 10 years took 70. Perfectionist documentation requirements expanded scope infinitely
• The Cost — Enormous time investment with diminishing returns on quality
• The Lesson — Over-documentation becomes a productivity killer when you document more than you can maintain

For IT projects, the equivalent trap is excessive change management documentation, redundant approval processes, or system designs so detailed they become outdated before implementation begins.

The balance: Document what matters for compliance, decision-making, and knowledge transfer. Let the rest go. Your team will move faster and deliver better outcomes.