ITauthor

Parkinson's Law says "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion". A more accurate description would be: "People take as long as they're given to complete a job".

This was demonstrated to me very clearly over the past couple of weeks as the bid team I've been leading worked towards the submission deadline for an extremely large tender. The original submission date was extended by 10 days and yet we still ended up hitting the submit button less than 15 minutes before the closing time.

As bid team manager one of my main tasks has been keeping people supplied with work and instilling a sense of urgency. Apart from finalising pricing, we could have had everything finished, polished and ready to go days before the deadline, but even the day before I was having to play the bad guy, telling folks to cut the chatter to get the work done.

Fortunately, our little team - 4 of us - worked well together and had a good mix of skills. With other personalities it might not have worked so well, given that one of my team members was previously Customer Services Manager and was the person who had hired me and been my first line manager at the company, and another had Director in his job title, so they could have reacted badly, given that either of them could have been team leader. But they were both completely professional in their attitude and, from Day One, our team was a real team and not just four individuals who'd been told to work together for a few months.

So the bid went in yesterday: four months' work, 24 separate documents, 904 pages. Huge relief, of course, but also - as usual with big projects that are suddenly complete - a slight sense of anticlimax. I took a day off today to celebrate and reflect on what we've achieved, and to look forward to what's coming next.

Oh, and also to write my first blog post in a long time.