There is an apocryphal story about a management committee meeting with three items on the agenda: design a power plant, build a bike shed for employee use, supply refreshments for the Welfare Committee. The story goes that the first item was approved in a few minutes. The second item turned into a forty-minute discussion about what color the shed should be and who should get to use it. The third item it was decided, after deliberation, did not have enough information to make a decision, so it was added to the next planned meeting’s agenda. The vast majority of the time in the meeting was spent on the least consequential of the agenda items. This is bike-shedding.

Read the rest of this entry »