Parkinson's Law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." A more succinct phrasing also commonly used is "work expands to fill the time available." or in computer-ese, "Data expands to fill the space available for storage".
Application of Parkinson's Law
Parkinson's Law is applied in many arenas of human endeavor.
- In Project Management, individual tasks with end dates rarely finish early because the people doing the work expand the work to finish approximately at the end date. Coupled with the Student syndrome, individual tasks are nearly guaranteed to be late.
- Individuals see this arise in their daily activities as well. No matter how many things one has on their plate, they all tend to get done. This leads to the canard, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person" because it appears they are better at "time management." While this may be true, it is just that they are doing more and the work is not expanding indefinitely to fill non-busy time.
- As an individuals income rises, their costs of living and lifestyle increases to meet their income level.
Note the first thing about Project management above: This means we can never finish projects early or even on time!
There is controversy surrounding Wikipedia and how accurate its entries are but it sure sounds convincing. Is it true? It seems that way from personal experience at work. Software features need to be dropped in order to meet deadlines.
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