Architecture & practice·Estimation and planning
the task had two weeks allocated and took two weeks, and it would have taken three days in a crisis.
Parkinson's law
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. It is the counterweight to padding: generous estimates do not usually finish early, they finish on time with more gold plating and more deliberation. It is an argument for timeboxes and small batches rather than for squeezing people, which produces the same expansion with worse quality and less trust.