Tom Jones belted it out first: “It’s not unusual…” — and while he was singing about love, heartbreak, and questionable dance moves, he might as well have been singing about project management. Because if there’s one universal truth in this profession, it’s this: nothing truly unusual ever happens. Everything you think is a shocking twist is just the same old plot line wearing a new pair of shoes.

Projects misbehave. They wander off, ignore instructions, forget deadlines, and occasionally set metaphorical fires just to see if anyone is paying attention. And yet, every time it happens, someone in the room gasps like they’ve just witnessed a solar eclipse. “This is unusual,” they say, clutching their pearls.

No, it’s not.
It’s Tuesday.

Take scope creep. People talk about it like it’s a rare cosmic event, but it’s more like that neighbor who strolls into your backyard uninvited, opens your fridge, and asks if you have any sparkling water. Requirements changing isn’t unusual — it’s a rite of passage. If your requirements don’t change, that’s when you should worry. Something’s wrong. Someone’s hiding something. Check the basement.

And disappearing stakeholders? Please. They vanish more reliably than socks in a dryer. One minute they’re in every meeting, nodding enthusiastically; the next, they’ve evaporated into the corporate ether, leaving you with a half‑approved plan and a vague sense of abandonment. If Houdini were alive today, he’d be teaching masterclasses to senior executives.

Then there’s the classic: unrealistic deadlines. Every project has that moment when someone — usually someone who hasn’t opened a Gantt chart since the Clinton administration — declares, “We can definitely deliver this in six weeks.” They say it with the confidence of a man who has never once been punished by reality. And the room nods, because optimism is contagious and no one wants to be the person who says, “Actually, physics disagrees.”

But here’s the truth: projects behave badly because people behave normally. People change their minds. People underestimate complexity. People say “yes” when they mean “I hope this works out somehow.” People avoid conflict, delay decisions, and assume someone else is handling the things no one is handling. None of this is unusual. What’s unusual is pretending we didn’t see it coming.

A good PM doesn’t eliminate chaos — they anticipate it. They build buffers like a doomsday prepper stockpiling canned beans. They ask the awkward questions early, before the room gets too attached to the fantasy timeline. They design processes that catch the usual suspects before they sneak out the back door. They don’t wait for the fire drill; they assume the fire drill is already penciled in for Week 7, right between “integration testing” and “executive panic.”

And when the inevitable happens — when the project throws a tantrum, misses a milestone, or reveals a requirement that somehow no one mentioned for six months — the seasoned PM doesn’t panic. They don’t flinch. They don’t even blink. They simply channel their inner Tom Jones, shrug, and think, “It’s not unusual.”

Because it isn’t.
It never was.

The real skill in project management isn’t preventing chaos — it’s recognizing the patterns, predicting the misbehavior, and building a system that bends without breaking. It’s understanding that projects are living, breathing, human‑powered organisms, and humans are gloriously, consistently messy.

So, the next time your project acts up, don’t act surprised. Smile knowingly. You’re not witnessing an anomaly — you’re witnessing the natural order of things.

Because in project management, the only truly unusual thing is believing anything is unusual.

“Chaos is the law of nature; order is the dream of man.” — Henry AdamsBottom of Form Your feedback is always welcome here in the comments, and in the Community Discussion Forum!