People given more time for a task start it later, so time added as a safety margin is used up before the work begins.
Goldratt named it in Critical Chain (1997), a business novel about project management, after the student who, given more time for an assignment, still starts it at the last minute. His point was about estimates: padding each task does not protect the schedule, because the padding is spent at the front. The nearest controlled test, Bryan and Locke's 1967 study of Parkinson's law, found that generous time limits slowed people down by lowering the goals they set.
In practice
- A team given four weeks for a feature that needs two starts in the third week, and the buffer its manager added is gone before anyone opens the code.
- A student granted a week's extension on an essay begins it the night before the new deadline, exactly as she would have begun the original one.
- Standing
- Named from practitioner observation rather than measured. The procrastination literature supports the pattern; whether extra time buys any extra quality is less clear. Compare Parkinson's law, which spreads the work across the time rather than postponing it.
- Subject
- Learning & Education
- Essay
- What works in learning, and what schools can and cannot change