(… and it’s impacts on Home Office Work) In this talk we will have a look at the well-known Parkinson’s Law and its corollaries. Does work really expand or shrink to the time we give it? How does it correlate with estimations and how does this play out with new ways of working? Several agile paradigms have been altered out of necessity during the pandemic. Some things are being viewed differently now, given with all that we learnt during this time. So how do old theories now fare given the new knowledge. Were they ever valid and are they valid now? We want to inspect what we have learnt in the last years and share those findings with you. Learning objectives: - Is Parkinsons Law really applicable? (and is it a law indeed?) - How does Homeoffice change work in regards to time? - Why is there less conflict when working distributed? - Is absence of conflict desirable."

1. PARKINSON‘S LAW REVISITED
(... AND ITS IMPACT ON HOME OFFICE)

2. PARKINSON’S
LAW
REVISITED
Original
Book: Parkinson’s Law (and other studies
in Administration)
Seventeeth Printing
© 1957 by C. Northcote
Parkinson
German:
PARKINSONS GESETZ (und
andere Untersuchen über die
Verwaltung)
© 1958

3. WHAT IS A
SCIENTIFIC
LAW
Scientific laws summarize the results of
experiments or observations, usually
within a certain range of application.
A scientific law may be contradicted,
restricted, or extended by future
observations.

4. PARKINSON’S LAW
WORK EXPANDS SO AS TO FILL THE
TIME AVAILABLE FOR ITS COMPLETION.

5. INCREASE IN ADMINISTRATIVE WORK

6. THE SHORT LIST, OR PRINCIPLES OF SELECTION

7. THE OLD LADY
AND THE POST
CARD

8. VOTE OF
HAND
Time is precious
You should not waste time.
Work expands so as to fill the time
available for its completion.

9. PARKINSON’S
LAW IN THE
AGILE
LABORATORY • THE TIMEBOX
Mainly applicable
practice

10. DIFFERENT
TYPE OF
TIMEBOXES
The scheduled meeting / scheduled task
The working day/ the working week
A scrum sprint
The project duration
A calendar year / a fiscal year

11. TIMEBOX VS. TODO LIST
Limit the time for a given task
Easier to schedule tasks due to pre-
decided duration
Reduced risk of gold plating
Challenges:
How much time to allot for a Task
What to do if the Allotted Time is wrong?
Tasks are unlikely to be unfinished
Time allotment to tasks is flexible
Reduced progress predicability
Risk of tasks stying undone due to
reprioritizing

12. TIMEBOX
SIZING
EXPERIMENT
Drawing Game - Meisterwerke
Rules: One player describes the picture, the other
player has to draw it.
Each picture has ten statements that have to be
checked with the drawing. These are not known to
both players up front. For each statement that can be
checked correct one point is given.

13. WITHOUT TIMEBOX

14. 2 MINUTE TIMEBOX

15. 30 SECOND TIMEBOX

16. HOW TO ADDRESS
PARKINSON‘S LAW

17. GAME CHANGER -
PANDEMIC -
WORKING IN
HOMEOFFICE

18. VOTE OF HAND
I am more
productive
working from
home office
I want to work at
least part time
from home

19. WHY
WORKING
FROM
HOME IS
WORKING
We had to make it work
We want to make it work
We do not see what is not
working

20. COMMUNICATION
MODEL - ALISTAIR
COCKBURN
• ERG SECOND - ARGH MINUTE
• OSMOTIC COMMUNICATION
• INFORMATION RADIATORS
• BUS LENGTH COMMUNICATION
PRINCIPLE
Alistair Cockburn - Agile Software Development: The cooperative game

21. CONFLICT
RESOLUTION
AND
HOMEOFFICE
Reasons for remote conflict may be
because of the remote work
paradigma.
Conflict resolution in remote work has
to be handled differently from
conflict resolution in collocated work
Conflict resolution in remote work is
more likely to be superficial
Key factors for conflicts in remote
work are missing feedback loops

22. REMOTE
WORK AND
PARKINSON’S
LAW
Because of higher cost of communication, the
overhead in communication has to be
accounted for in the planning of the timebox
Missing feedback loops can adversely
affect this communication overhead
Determination of what is not working /
working differently because of Parkinson’s
law is more difficult to assess.

23. THANK YOU