Work expands to fill the time available for its completion

Had a discussion recently with a sub-committee I head for HRTC's Defense & Homeland Security Consortium with regard to developing and marketing a new brand concept. The subject of focus groups and surveys and the like came up, and interestingly enough, the time and effectiveness dilemma that surrounds them.

One of the committee members volunteered her company's services and a technique with which I was unfamiliar: Open Space Technology, a simple way to run more productive meetings and a powerful way to lead any kind of organization. While OST sounds a bit "new-agey" to me, it certainly has its merits.

The most interesting thing came as follow-up after the meeting via email (thanks Suzanna!) and refers to Parkinson's law (akin to Murphy's Law). This is so simple, it's borderline silly, but oh so hitting the nail on the proverbial head.


"Work expands to fill the time available for its completion"

...is a satiric proverb coined in 1955 by British historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993), which came to be known as his most famous “Parkinson's Law”. It points out that people usually take all the time allotted (and frequently more) to accomplish any task.


Parkinson's law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Parkinson's Law as commonly referenced 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." It was first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, appearing as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955, later reprinted together with other essays in the book Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress (London, John Murray, 1958). He derived the dictum from his extensive experience in the British Civil Service.

The current form of the law is not that which Parkinson refers to by that name in the article. Rather, he assigns to the term a mathematical equation describing the rate at which bureaucracies expand over time.

Much of the essay is dedicated to a summary of purportedly scientific observations supporting his law, such as the increase in the number of employees at the Colonial Office while Britain's overseas empire declined. He explains this growth by two forces: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals" and (2) "Officials make work for each other." He notes in particular that the total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done."

In time, however, the first-referenced meaning of the phrase has dominated, and sprouted several corollaries: for example, the derivative relating to computers: "Data expands to fill the space available for storage". "Parkinson's Law" could be generalized further still as: "The demand upon a resource always expands to match the supply of the resource." An extension is often added to this, stating that "the reverse is not true." This generalization has become very similar to the economic law of cost and demand; that the lower the cost of a service or commodity, the greater the quantity demanded.

Parkinson also proposed a rule about the efficiency of administrative councils. He defined a coefficient of inefficiency with the number of members as the main determining variable.

Parkinson's Law is applied in many arenas of human endeavour.
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. Note that this law has been contested as false and counter-productive to project management. (See Peopleware.)

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 individual's income rises, their costs of living and lifestyle increases to meet their income level.

Part of Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s observations are that once a core organisation exists, it will perpetuate and expand itself regardless of the reason it came into being.

Several other Laws attributed to Parkinson:

"Parkinson's Law" = Work expands to fill the time available.

"Parkinson's Second Law" = Expenditures rise to meet income.

"Parkinson's Third Law" = Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay.

"Parkinson's Fourth Law" = The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.

"Parkinson's Fifth Law" = If there is a way to delay an important decision the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.

Parkinson's Law of Science" = The progress of science varies inversely with the number of journals published.

"Parkinson's Law of Delay" = Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

"Parkinson's Law of Meetings" = The time spent in a meeting on an item is inversely propotional to its value (up to a limit).

"Parkinson's Law of 1000" = An enterprise employing more than 1000 people becomes a self-perpetuating empire, creating so much internal work that it no longer needs any contact with the outside world.

"Parkinson's Law of Data" = Data expands to fill the space available.

Parkinson's Law of Data deserves some explanatory expanding itself; buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. It has been observed since the mid-1980s that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for constant dollars also tends to about double once every 18 months (see Moore's Law); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely.