The best color for the bike shed

By SeppVei - Own work, CC0, Link

I watched a video the other day of a chap talking about the bike shed effect. The idea goes around a group discussing building a nuclear plant. As the subject is vastly complicated, not everyone can get their head around the technicalities so most of the team is quiet. But when the subject comes to the planning of the bike shed that is mandatory for every nuclear plant, the room erupts into a massive discussion because everyone involved is an expert on bike sheds.

We do see the bike shed effect in software development too. Discussions around abstractions, algorithms or performance of an application, is usually mellow.

But when it comes to the choice of ide, the non trivial choice betweens tabs vs spaces or whether the team should use swim lanes or epics everyone is ready to karate kick each others' pets.

That is a good bike shed btw. The colour is not quite right though.