Parkinson's law of triviality, also known as bikeshedding or the bicycle-shed example, is C. Northcote Parkinson's 1957 argument that organizations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Parkinson demonstrated this by contrasting the triviality of the cost of building a bike shed to an atomic reactor. The law has been applied to software development and other activities.
Read more about Parkinson's Law Of Triviality: Argument, When Governance Meetings Devolve Into Two-cents' Worth, Related Principles and Formulations
Famous quotes containing the words parkinson, law and/or triviality:
“In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.”
—Cecil Parkinson (b. 1932)
“If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“nor till the poets among us can be “literalists of the imagination”Mabove insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” shall we have
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—Marianne Moore (1887–1972)