TFMSC: The Bikeshed Formula

A while back I ranted on Design Meetings are A Waste of Time. As luck would have it, I just had an opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. I had a new design idea that touched many areas of my company. We have a server side group and a client side and subgroups within each. Following my tips, I was able to have very substantive design meetings without bikeshed arguments and derailments.

In analyzing this, I derived the follwing formula:

P_b = Nϕ

where

P_b = Probability of a Bikeshed meeting

N = Number of people at the meeting - meeting organizer

ϕ = Frequency of bikeshed meetings at your company

= # developers who think they’re experts / # of actual experts

In other words, keep the N low. In doing so I found that I was able to isolate the bikeshedders. This way they could only derail a minimal amount of meeting time.

Not to toot my own horn but…it worked. I got very constructive feedback from the actual company experts and marginalized the bikshedders. I am now proceeding with minimal interruption.

Do you really listen to all your music? : Billy Cobham - Spectrum

It sucks/It rocks. Every song has a slash title, I don’t know why. The first half of the slash sucks (sl)ash but the second part for all six songs are solid fusion. Very enjoyable…as long as you can fast forward through the first half of every song.