Parkinson's Law

It's pretty rare that I come across a work saying that I feel compelled to share with people, but Parkinson's Law is a very important law to keep in mind in software development. What is it?

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

This has been said in many different ways, in many different professions, or even in nature. Those include...

"Data expands to fill the space available for storage."

"Storage requirements will increase to meet storage capacity."

"Nature abhors a vacuum."

Why does this matter? One simple reason. Programmers, and all other IT people, tend to aim for the stars, and will happily spend from now until the end of eternity designing the absolutely perfect, beautiful system. Instead of shipping the product.

In the end, real developers ship.