The Bike Shed and the Atomic Power Plant

I enjoyed reading the writings from C. Northcote Parkinson that were linked to from 37 Signals.

Specifically, he describes the difference between building a bike shed vs. an atomic power plant. He explains that getting approval to build the atomic power plant is easier to do because it’s so vast and so complicated that people can’t understand it. Instead of trying to understand they assume that someone else checked all the facts before it got to them, and they go ahead and approve the project.  

Contrast that with the bike shed which is so simple to build that anyone can do it. And since anyone can build it, everyone feels it’s their job to provide input on how it should be built which creates an environment where the simple turns into the complex and the shed never gets built.

From my experience, this analogy is right on the money. I’ve worked at companies where the most complex software projects were approved with very little oversight from management or the board of directors. Because the projects were so complex and only the management team understood the vision for the product, the normal checks and balances were never put in place. Yet some smaller software projects that would have helped us grow our existing business were bogged down in bureaucracy.

So maybe the moral of the story is to make your project proposal sound so complex and so intimidating that everyone will assume it’s already been checked out.