bikeshedding

ops cultureprogramming

Stands for: Parkinson's Law of Triviality

Spending disproportionate discussion on a trivial detail while an important, complex decision passes with little scrutiny.

The name comes from C. Northcote Parkinson's 1957 illustration: a committee approves a nuclear plant quickly but argues for hours over the colour of the bike shed, because everyone has an opinion on the shed and few can weigh the reactor. It is the standing hazard of every design review.

Bikeshedding is the observation that a committee will approve a nuclear power plant with little discussion and then argue for hours about the colour of the bicycle shed. Parkinson called it the law of triviality: the time spent on an agenda item is inversely proportional to its cost, because trivial items are the ones everyone feels qualified to have an opinion about.

The mechanism is not stupidity, which is why it is worth understanding rather than mocking. Nobody wants to admit they cannot evaluate the reactor design, so the reactor passes on the authority of whoever presented it. The bike shed is different: everyone has seen a shed, everyone can picture a colour, and participating costs nothing. Attention flows to where competence feels available.

The term entered software culture through a 1999 message on a FreeBSD mailing list, and it has been a standard piece of engineering vocabulary since. Naming it is most of the cure: in a design review, noticing aloud that the group has spent forty minutes on a variable name and four on the concurrency model tends to redirect the room without anyone needing to be told they are wasting time.

Also known as: bike-shedding, bike shed, law of triviality

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