The schedule and Parkinson's Law

In this podcast, Ricardo explains the concept of "Parkinson's Law" on projects and how to prepare a feasible schedule to avoid the law. He gives tips on how to develop work packages to be are easier to measure.

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Episode transcript

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We are pleased to present five minutes. I'll be on podcasts with Ricardo Vargas

Speaker 1 (10s): Hello everybody welcome to the five Minutes PM podcasts. I like to talk to you today about parking. So a lot, and the schedule, and Y I like to discuss about this because most of the people start telling me that, Oh, I don't want to prepare is cattle, because usually the scallop doesn't reflect what is happening. I plan X and I receive Z and on why this, why is this? So let me explain the first.

Let's understand what is the Parkinson LA the Parkinson law tell that the work will expand to fill all available. Time, translate late in this. I want to say to you that if you have one day to do one thing, then you would spend one day. But if I change your deadline too, a week, you spent the week. If I change for the math, you will spend a month. Let's remember the student at a university or the school you give them the students one day to do a task.

They've spent the whole day. If you give them five days, they will spend the five days. Why? Because this is human behavior. We want to feel the time to fill the time properly. And in your other hand, most of the people trying to avoid this kind of Parkinson Law effect, they could dramatically their durations to make a challenging duration, but usually when they do that, they are not making a challenging duration.

They are making an impossible duration. So what does the trickier, the trick here is to have a challenging duration, not an impossible and not a very, a fat with a lot of float scandal. So. And this is the challenge is, and for sure you that our listening to this podcast right now, we'll be asking, how do I do that? So the secret it's again and again, we work on this scope management work on the pros at scope.

So why we have all this cloud around the duration of the task first, because we want to work in the macro environment. We want to think, Oh, much time. Do I need to build a home this year? Our guests will be extremely, extremely precise you to be extremely with a huge float. So when we reduced this small pieces to small parts, it's much easier.

So again, we need to develop is Mahler working packages. We need to turn the page, the big problem, a big, big projects into small. When do I tell you how much time do you need to build a home? You can get something around three, four hours, like we saw in the Guinness book, or you can tell me all 10 years. It depends off what in depends on the scope of the house and also the quality off your dad to be, yes, your scope management two, because one thing it's to try to understand how much are you, what time we'll the, the home take butt in your hand, if you detailed, you can say, how's that much time.

Do we need to install it this door? This is a much smaller. And when we detail, for sure, we'll have a much less complex group of work. When we think in a work package, it's easy to understand how much it will cost and how much the time it will need. It's different. It's easier to understand it's less complex and doing that. When I built this camel, I will have a much more realistic scallop them work in the macro.

So it's the possible you can guess and put your desires on that Burt in your hand, if you need to dive into your scope to make sure that there's more pieces are properly understood and proper planet. So this more peace is a lot of people say, Oh, this is too much bureaucracy, but not, not because to administer the problem later or having, you know, a huge floats like a plan of 10 a day and do it in 100 days this year, this is what we see all the time.

When we see product results, why are the people do not spend enough time doing proper planning? So when you need to understand an ORC against the Parkinson Law, it's not just putting the time. It's not saying, Oh, everybody's planning with a huge lack. Okay. So let's cut by half of the timeline, which is not the right way, the right way is let's detail it more understand if it's reasonable to tell that I need one month to install a door, or if I need something like two or three hours.

So my mistake would be if I do this in this small piece. So this is the secret to combat and to fight against the Parkinson Law in a reasonable and in the planet. Wait, I hope you enjoyed this podcast and no, Parkinson not any more. And see you next week with another five minutes PM. Podcast bye.

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