Bike shed – a discussion that pointlessly dwells on details and wastes time
Example: Someone posts a variation on a screen and one person offers .02 on the copy, another wants the header color changed, another wants a different image used, etc. Too many chefs on something that doesn’t even matter much.
It’s something we have to watch for in our Campfire chat room where it’s easy to have pile-ons that don’t really accomplish much. Someone has to blow the whistle every once in a while and say, “Is this conversation really helping?” Calling out “Bike shed” is a quick way to do that.
About the term
Poul-Henning Kamp used the term in “A bike shed (any colour will do) on greener grass…” and gives credit to C. Northcote Parkinson, a management guru who compared building an atomic power plant to building a bike shed. Kamp’s summary:
Anyone can build [a bike shed] over a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is here.
More Parkinson wisdom
Parkinson is also the namesake of Parkinson’s law: “work expands to fill the time available.” He observed that the total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.”
Some more interesting quotes from C. Northcote Parkinson:
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
Expansion means complexity and complexity decay.
Expenditures rise to meet income.
The Law of Triviality… briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.
When any organizational entity expands beyond 21 members, the real power will be in some smaller body.
Men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.
The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.
Kyle Pike
on 06 Aug 07HR decided to give my office four more people a couple months ago for no reason. There were only five of us, but we got the job done without any complaints from customers or gripes from us. With nine people we now each perform about one task per day and spend the rest of the day with nothing to do.
Britt
on 06 Aug 07Those quotations remind of another favorite of mine. “Ambition is action postponed.” I think Krishnamurti said that one. A bit better way of saying, “Shit or get off the pot.”
Adam
on 06 Aug 07The quote about men entering local politics because of a bad marriage is hilarious. Surrounded by words of wisdom about management and efficiency, it almost felt like “One of these things does not belong here, one of these things is not the same…”
Timoni
on 06 Aug 07While I like the idea of having a simple name for a frustrating situation, there’s still no way I could shout “bike shed!” at a client.
Jeff Koke
on 06 Aug 07We call it a “goat rodeo”—but it’s essentially the same thing.
Neil Wilson
on 07 Aug 07A couple of points
- The British have a highly developed sense of cynicism and sarcasm which for some reason seems to right over the heads of our American cousins.
- Parkinson was British.
mike
on 07 Aug 07Picking on the lowly bicycle? Couldn’t we call it rush hour, sprawl, or parking garage? What about cul-de-sac development? TSA security checkpoint? Anything?
;)
nitpicker
on 07 Aug 07you should get a building permit before erecting enduring structures on your land!
This discussion is closed.