Parkinson's law states that: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."
I find it quite intriguing to experience very different perception of time and the effort needed to get a task get done. I've worked in environments where everyone expected that huge requirement and scope changes to the whole project was picked up immediately and team members adapted to it within a couple of minutes. (This had a side effect that people felt symptoms of burn out. Also financial unhealthy consequences both for the company and the employees.)
At the other hand, I've worked in environments where slightest changes took days and long discussions before accepted and after worked on. Estimations of the tasks were up to a factor of 1000x higher than in the other environment.
In both environments people were really busy and hard working. The ambiance and the end result were actually comparable. But the perception was totally different.
Do you have similar experiences? Do you prefer the one over the other? What do you think about this subject?
But it's a double edged sword. In the wrong hands, a management team can use it as an excuse to overwork the team causing burn out and high turnover rates.