It’s just a bikeshed
Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 05:43pm
After reading my conclusion regarding the Forms That Work training, Hamish asked me if I had ever posted about the bikeshed.
I took him literally and replied that I had; at first when they were installed and again when I first used them.
He wasn’t talking about the actual lockers where we store our bicycles at work. He meant the proverbial bikeshed that doesn’t get painted because everyone must have input on the simple decision of selecting a colour. The other part of the proverb is the billion dollar atomic power plant that is approved right away because it is too complex to grasp, and thus few feel that they must have input.
When I think about it, bikesheds occur far too often. In my experience, most of these are “it’s just” situations:
- It’s just another web page,
- It’s just another web form; or
- It’s just another link.
I’m not going to expand on these “it’s just” situations at the right now. They could be good topics for future posts…
Tagged with: development, project management, software
the post from bikeshed.com has it exactly right, people like to “get some runs on the board” and often get tunnel vision
hamish - November 7th, 2007 at 6:07 pm