Parkinson's law and how to manage it

The definition of Parkinson's Law is that work expands to fill the time alotted . Cyril Northcote Parkinson, whos was a British author and historian outlined the concept in a humorous essay in The Economist in 1955. In the essay, Parkinson describes how assigned tasks will usually take up all the time available for its completion, and if more time can be made available, the task will also take up that added time. Sometimes the law is applied to limit increasing bureaucracy in a company or organisation. The growth of bureaucracy depends on mainly two factors: The Law of Multiplication of Subordinates and The Law of Multiplication of Work. Parkinson determined from his analysis that a typical company had a staff increase per year to be around 5-7% completely unrelated to the amount of work in the organisation. The fact that there is no linear relationship between amount of staff and amount of people depicts Parkinson's law. Based on this, he formulated a mathematical formula to determine the annual increase in staff in any public administrative department. An example for how Parkinson's law affects projects is that--. Imagine.. Parkinson describes how work is elastic in its demands on time.

Explanation

Work has a tendency to become increasingly more complex as to fill the time alotted when poeple are involved. Procrastination plays a big role in Parkinson's law. Knowing that a project or and undertaking has a deadline often inspires us to leave work to right before that deadline – and our delays in getting started mean the time required for that task expands.

Parkinson uses the example of how the bureaucracy of the British Civil Service grew unrelated to the amount of work. The growth depended on two factors: The Law of Multiplication of Subordinates and The Law of Multiplication of Work. He formulated a mathematical formula to determine the increase in staff in any public administrative departmment. Parkinson's Law explains the behavioural aspect of scheduling. If more time is available to complete a task, the task will most likely take up all the time. This results in inefficient use of time and effort. Project managers can use this to understand employees motivation for completing tasks. In project schedule management, this is valuable knowledge when estimating activity duration. The project manager should account for this tendency when scheduling a project and to ensure efficient use of time. To account for Parkinson's Law, a project manager needs to set deadlines. Deadlines ensure that a task only takes up the necessary time for completion while requiring the most effort.

References

https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-law https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/what-is-parkinsons-law#:~:text=Parkinson%27s%20Law%20is%20the%20old,for%20the%20Economist%20in%201955.