In Praise of Small Teams: Small Team Higher Quality

  PM Network  

Question: My once-responsive project team has grown lately in terms of both numbers and bureaucracy. What formerly was a nimble and agile group is increasingly sluggish and slow—and much more concerned with process than with results. Is this an inevitable phase of the project life cycle?

What you are experiencing may be new to you, but it has probably plagued project management forever. The best analysis of this issue was set forth by a mid-20th century British philosopher named C. Northcote Parkinson in his brilliant little 1957 book Parkinson’s Law and Other Studies in Administration [Ballantine Books].

Parkinson’s Law is famous, most often crudely reduced to the aphorism: “Work expands to fill the time available to do it.” But in his book, Mr. Parkinson went much further than that, showing how work also expands in lockstep with the increase in the number of people in the organization. It’s a short and readable book, which so clearly explains the dysfunction of organizations that experienced project managers will spend half their time laughing and the other half weeping.

We can fool ourselves into thinking that because the amount of work has grown, surely the number of workers must go up as well. But with his wry British humor, Mr. Parkinson shows how that thinking conflates cause and effect: Too often, it is not the work …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.