70+ Best project management memes for 2023

Project management is growing ever more popular, so much so that the demand for project professionals is expected to reach 25 million by 2030 at a rate of 2.3 million annual job openings.

This demand is so high that — according to project management statistics — more than half of all projects are run by non-certified project managers.

In short, project management is the way of the future, but not enough people in the present know how to take advantage of it.

This inevitably leads to some tense situations. I could describe them, but it’s best to just show you.

As the old adage goes, a meme is worth 1,000 words, so let’s take a look at the current state of dysfunctional project management and see how many images you can identify with.

Project manager struggles memes

It takes a lot to be a project manager. Even the most competent ones will butt heads with clients, team members, or stakeholders over the course of a project.

But they all handle their responsibilities in unique ways. Let’s take a look at some examples.

Developers in project management memes

Ideally, your project manager should have working knowledge relating to the field of their project — a PM working on a construction project should understand how construction works, just like a PM working on a software development project should understand how software development works.

For one reason or another, this isn’t always the case, leading project team members to work under a leader who doesn’t understand how work gets done.

If you’ve had such a project manager, then these project management memes should feel relatable.

Risk management memes

A common cause of project failure is a lack of risk management. 

Statistics show that 34% of PMs don’t use it at all. 

Now, we don’t know why they refuse to go near anything that sounds like it could be related to project risks or project assumptions, but we can depict the chaos.

Clients in project management memes

Project managers have a hard time dealing with clients who don’t understand the project management process. They don’t mean to make disruptive requests, but these requests typically result in scope creep and extend the project timeline.

So, for all the PMs who have had these types of dealings, these memes are for you.

The corporate side of project management memes

The reason PMs do some things that seem inexplicable sometimes has less to do with their eccentricities and more to do with the way businesses treat projects.

Some companies care about quality, so they’ll be willing to grant the PM’s request for additional time to complete the project.

Others care about meeting a deadline, even at the cost of delivering a mediocre product. They may throw more money at the project, but this isn’t always the solution.

The following memes illustrate the latter.

Scrum bad memes

There’s no denying that Scrum is one of the most popular Agile frameworks out there, if not the most popular.

There’s also no denying that many people working in project management hate Scrum, so if you’re one of them, enjoy.

Miscellaneous project management memes

To cap things off, here are some memes that don’t fit snugly into any of the previous categories.

Avoid some of the common pitfalls of project management with Plaky

Most of the problematic situations that inspired these memes come from the people-side of things.

An incompetent ship captain is an incompetent ship captain, whether they’re in charge of a large cruise ship or a small supply ship.

But this doesn’t mean that a good captain will be able to accomplish the same things on a state-of-the-art ship as they would on a creaky old galley.

That’s why project managers should use Plaky to simplify and modernize the project management process for their whole team.

With Plaky, you can assign roles and manage tasks visually and intuitively. And, unlike a creaky old galley — or most other PM tools of its kind — it doesn’t limit the number of users you can add or task cards you can make by locking them behind paywalls.

✉️ These memes have been created by sifting through common complaints of project workers and identifying commonalities among them. If you have any pain points regarding project management that haven’t been depicted, you can email us about them at blogfeedback@plaky.com and we may include them.