Parkinson's Law

The Parkinson's Law, enunciated by the British Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 1957, affirms that "work expands to fill the time available for its completion".

In a bureaucracy, this is motivated by two factors:

1. An official wants to multiply his subordinates, not rivals
2. Staff members create jobs for each other

Cyril Northcote Parkinson enunciated it in the book of the same name as a result of his extensive experience in the British Civil Service. Scientific observations that contributed to the development of the law included noting that as the British Empire declined in importance, the number of employees in the Colonial Office (Colonial Office) increased.

Parkinson also noted that the total number of those employed within a bureaucracy increases by 5-7 percent per year "regardless of variations in the amount of work (if any) that must be done".

For many, the more time you have to do something, the more your mind will wander and the more problems will arise. This fact has a great application in time management, productivity and project management, since setting short delivery times helps us avoid unnecessarily expanding work.

"Parkinsons Law" it is also used to refer to another related to computer systems: "Data expands to fill the space available for storage". Thus, buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive programming techniques. It has been observed in the last 10 years that the memory usage of systems has shown a tendency to double approximately once every 18 months. Fortunately, the memory density available for constant money also tends to double every 12 months (see Moore's Law). Unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that this cannot go on indefinitely.

Parkinson's three fundamental laws are:

1. "The work expands to fill the time available for its realization."
2. "Expenditures increase to cover all incomes."
3. "The time spent on any agenda item is inversely proportional to its importance" (Parkinson called the law of triviality).

These three laws, as well as others that Parkinson formulated, such as the law of procrastination or the art of wasting time and the law of occupying empty spaces: for Much space in an office will always require more, are laws drawn from daily experience, through which, while describing or revealing a certain reality, the lack of efficiency of administrative work is denounced.