Re-thinking Scheduling: Parkinson's Law Inverted

The Empire State Building-the tallest building in the world for over forty years-took just 13½ months to build. Amazing as this may seem today, it was not remarkable at the time; most skyscrapers were built in about a year. How did they do that? In those days, cash flow was more important than cost, and schedule routinely trumped scope. The paradigm was the inverse of Parkinson's Law-work should contract to fit the time allotted. Today, Parkinson's Law is alive and well in current scheduling approaches that break work down into tasks, estimate the tasks, and sum up the result. This approach invites work on each task to expand to fit the estimated time. Mary Poppendieck will show why you should not ask, "How long will this take?", but ask instead, "What can be done by this date?" You will learn how to accomplish more with less by applying cash flow thinking and turning Parkinson's Law upside down.