11/19/2010

Sometimes business managers and workers alike are faced with difficult choices. Not all tasks take the allotted amount of time to complete. Project managers are no different in this regard. It is not uncommon to gauge a task initially and determine that it will take x number of hours to focus on it and complete the work surrounding it; only to find that the task was less complicated than expected and it only required two-thirds of the time initially estimated. Our first inclination is to stretch the work out to make our estimate look more legitimate; however this is a highly inefficient response. This is where Parkinson's Law comes in.

Parkinson's law
According to the Theory of Constraints we always have some limiting factor. In this case, it simply is not time required to accomplish the task. Parkinson's Law states that when a task is accomplished, stop working on it. Don’t stretch it out and attempt to make it last longer. Use that extra time to apply to the next task. If this occurs frequently, maybe it is time to reevaluate the method you are using to gauge time estimates, and also the Theory of Constraints may need to be revisited to see how they may be better applied to focus on the task at hand.

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