What colour should we paint the Bike shed?

Jason Guiditta jguiditt at redhat.com
Fri Nov 16 20:13:51 UTC 2012


On 16/11/12 14:28 -0500, Matt Wagner wrote:
>On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 11:46:09AM +0000, Martyn Taylor wrote:
>> A guy in our office here sent this to me today, after I was
>> complaining that technical discussions generate no interest in our
>> office mailing list,  but deciding "What type of biscuits we should
>> buy" generates a flood of mails.
>>
>> From time to time our list produces similar responses:
>> http://puce.bikeshed.org/
>
>That page burns my retinas, but the bike-shed analogy is worth suffering
>through it. Bikeshedding is indeed a persistent problem (not just here).
>Recognizing it and having a name to put to it is quite worthwhile, even
>if you have to stare at a lime-green screen for a while. (The fact that
>they chose such a god-awful color is quite ironic, given the context.)
>
>I'm a big fan of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence
>People." The book is quite old, and bits and pieces of the advice are
>kind of manipulative. But there's a lot of excellent advice about how to
>optimally interact with people.
>
>One of the bits that's really stuck with me, and that seems rather
>relevant to everyone wanting to pick the color of the bikeshed, is in
>the chapter entitled "Let the other person feel that the idea is his or
>hers." The actual title is an example of things that sound a bit
>manipulative, but the insight into psychology is interesting either way.
>
>The idea is that if you dump an idea on a group of people, it's human
>nature for some of them to oppose it, and not necessarily on its merits.
>But if you lead people to think that the idea is *theirs*, in whole or
>part, they're far more likely to go along with it.
>
>I think bike-shedding gets at the same effect. People try to make ideas
>"theirs" by arguing over the bikeshed color, even if it doesn't actually
>make any difference. The challenge is how to get people to feel
>ownership of ideas without having them feel like they have to make
>changes, and without trying to dupe anyone. I think it's a question of
>involving people enough that they feel like they're part-owner of the
>idea, without letting the discussion devolve into bikeshedding.
>
>-- Matt

Clearly, if this is for downstream, the choice is red, upstream I vote
lime green  ;)

-j



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