Parkinson's Law: It's Real, So Use It

Summary

Summarized wtih ChatGPT

Parkinson’s Law suggests that work expands to fill the time available, so setting deadlines can lead to better results and more efficient project completion. By imposing challenging yet achievable deadlines, teams can foster innovation and maintain a clear tempo in their work. To improve productivity, encourage weekly reporting and set explicit deadlines for tasks.

Key Takeaways:

1. Set clear, challenging deadlines to drive progress.
2. Implement a weekly reporting system to keep teams accountable.
3. Understand the Iron Triangle of scope, resources, and time to effectively manage projects.

Highlights from Article

Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Although it is counter-intuitive, you will find that through practice and experience, there is a lot of truth to this. Projects that don’t have deadlines imposed on them, even if they are self-imposed, will take a lot longer than they need to, and may suffer from feature creep and scope bloat.

If you’ve not come across the Iron Triangle before, the idea is that it represents the three key constraints of a project: Scope, which is the work that needs to be completed.Resources, which are the people and tools that are available to do the work.Time is, unsurprisingly, the amount of time that you have to get it done. Who’d have thought?

This tempo and cadence is crucial for effective leadership. Even though you may not think that people want it, and even if people themselves think they don’t want it, knowing that things need to be done by deadlines that are just on the cusp of the comfort zone forces real, tangible progress. If you think that a prototype might take a month, why not challenge the team to see what they can deliver by the end of the week? You will be surprised, and so will they.

get started, be aware that humans always underestimate what they can get done in one week.

Fight the drag. Set a deadline.

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