Parkinson's Law applied to Project Management

By Todd Hager, Vice President at BroadPoint Technologies

Cyril Northcote Parkinson posits in a 1995 essay for The Economist that, “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” He went on to provide a mathematical equation that was used to show the rate at which bureaucracies bloat over time. (I love Wikipedia..)

What is the implication for completion times of project tasks? Assume that a particular task estimated to take 7 days actually is completed in four days, does the performer deliver it to the next resource person? Not likely. Because the time estimates given are negotiated numbers, reporting an early finish of a task means that future estimate given by the project worker will be trimmed by the manager.

To avoid this possibility, rather than report early task completion, the worker is likely to spend the extra time performing checks and adding nice to have "bells and whistles" not strictly required by the specifications. Result? Extra time gained is wasted. The key here is to be aware of this phenomenon and guard against it by getting early completions identified, taking advantage of the resulting schedule slack.

BroadPoint consultants and project managers strive to complete projects on time and on budget while at the same time keeping a steady eye on the momentum of the work to gauge how best to achieve the greatest results in the least time regardless of the plan.

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For more from Todd Hager please visit his blog.