Project managers may be tempted to artificially reduce deadlines from 10 months to 8 months to compensate for delays, but unrealistic deadlines demotivate teams. Early overstaffing of projects forces shortcutting of the important design phase and results in unstable and uncertain outcomes. Projects should begin with careful planning and design by a small core team, which may take half the total time, before gradually increasing staff. Imposing unrealistic deadlines upfront due to time constraints can result in too much early staffing without a validated design.

1. Phony deadlines
(Parkinson’s Law)
Original in Spanish by Jose Barato

2. Phony deadlines (Parkinson’s Law)
• If the most probable estimated duration for a project is 10 months, Project Managers
might be tempted to reduce the target deadline to 8 months and thus compensate for
possible delays. According to Parkinson’s Law “work expands so as to fill the
time available for its completion”.
• The problem is that when a deadline is reduced to an impossible level, team
members will have no incentive to meet that deadline. They will realise that the
Project Manager has no respect for them because (s)he believes they will not make
an effort if they are not put under pressure.
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3. Phony deadlines (Parkinson’s Law)
• Early overstaffing tends to force projects into shortcutting the key design activity (to
give all those people something to do). Ideal staffing requires a small core team at
the beginning of the project and then to gradually introduce the rest of the team,
which is maintained stable until close to the end.
• Projects should begin with planning and design, activities that are best carried
out by a smallish team. If design is very important, it can require as much as
half the full project duration.
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4. Phony deadlines (Parkinson’s Law)
• The problem appears when a project has significant time constraints (and how many
don’t?). For example, if the client and management have stated that the project must
be completed several months early, that limit will bring forward the initially expected
conclusion.
• There is a natural inclination to take the effort lopped off the end and apply it
back at the beginning. But then the project has a pattern of early overstaffing.
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5. Phony deadlines (Parkinson’s Law)
• Early overstaffing produces a sad consequence in software projects. Early at the
beginning, team members start software coding. The programming phase starts
with no validated design. The result of a software project with no design is
highly uncertain.
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