Common Website Mistakes 2: Bike-shedding
In the second part of my series I want to focus on another typical culture-related mistake for websites: Bike-shedding.
Do you sometimes visit a website and notice small changes in the design, despite the fact that there are seemingly more urgent issues at hand? There might be a fundamentally flawed check-out process that got a nicer-looking cart icon, or a broken form that suddenly looks much better - while still being broken. If you are wondering how things like these happen, the answer might be bike-schedding.
Bike-shedding is one of the names for a concept also known as Law of triviality, stating that people within an organization commonly or typically give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. The term was coined after a fictional scenario where a commitee was tasked to approve plans for a nuclear power plant. Because this task is highly complex and disputed, commitee members spent the majority of their time discussing minor details that everyone can understand, like the materials to use for the bike-shed.
Chances are high you have experienced this at some point in your professional life. If you know this effect, it comes as no surprise that discussions in meetings rarely revolve around the important issues but rather unimportant details.
What you can do
Management
Make sure to distribute power and accountability equivalently. A great way to promote bike-shedding is giving power to someone not accountable. On a bigger scale, do not reward quantity over quality. If your promotion mechanism favors the loudest people, you practically condition your employees to bike-shed. They will feel the need to stand out and discuss on everything.
Website owner
On a small scale, it is beneficial to have as little people as possible in meetings. The more people in a meeting, the more trivial topics are typically discussed. On a bigger scale, ensure that you have management support for your decisions. If you think a topic is not worth being discussed, you should be able to communicate that - without being challenged.
What do you think?
Do you agree? Did you experience situations where printing culture slowed down your publication process? Is this article helpful and would you enjoy similar content? Let me know in the comments.