Parkinson's Law and the Case for Small Increments
par·kin·son's law noun — "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." — C. Northcote Parkinson, The Economist, 1955 In a previous post I wrote about Ron Jeffries, the co-founder of Extreme Programming and the man credited with inventing story points. One of Jeffries' core arguments — and the reason he eventually grew to regret story points — is that estimation tends to become a target, and once it becomes a target it stops being useful. Teams stop working toward delivering value and start working toward hitting a number. There is a law that explains exactly why this happens. It has been around since 1955 and it has nothing to do with software. But it describes software teams perfectly. What Is Parkinson's Law? Cyril Northcote Parkinson was a British naval historian who published a satirical essay in The Economist in 1955. In it, he observed something that anyone who has worked in a large organization will immediately recognize: w...