Parkinson's Law, or The Pursuit of Progress¶
Parkinson, C. N. (1957). Parkinson's Law, or The Pursuit of Progress: Or, The Pursuit of Progress.
Cited by¶
4 citations across 4 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Mechanisms¶
- Draft Review Cycle
- Its failure mode is bikeshedding — reviewers lavishing attention on trivial, easy-to-grasp details (wording, formatting) while the substantive risks go unexamined, because everyone has an opinion on the easy stuff.
This sourceParkinson's bicycle-shed example shows a committee dwelling on simple, trivial details while giving a complex, consequential proposal cursory review.
- Its failure mode is bikeshedding — reviewers lavishing attention on trivial, easy-to-grasp details (wording, formatting) while the substantive risks go unexamined, because everyone has an opinion on the easy stuff.
- Mockup
- And a realistic mockup invites bikeshedding: stakeholders fixate on trivial, easy-to-judge visual details (a shade of blue, a comma) while the substantive concept goes unexamined, because arguing about the paint is easier than arguing about the structure.
This sourceShows how stakeholders can fixate on trivial, easily judged details because those are easier to debate than substantive structure.
- And a realistic mockup invites bikeshedding: stakeholders fixate on trivial, easy-to-judge visual details (a shade of blue, a comma) while the substantive concept goes unexamined, because arguing about the paint is easier than arguing about the structure.
- Structure-Substance Review Workshop
- Its failure mode is the law of triviality: deliberation gravitates to the formal details everyone can have an opinion on — section titles, a heading font, the order of two equal items — while the hard, ambiguous substantive misfit goes unchallenged, and the resulting consensus feels like correctness.
This sourceIllustrates the law of triviality with a committee that barely scrutinizes a complex, consequential reactor proposal while extensively debating an inexpensive bicycle shed that everyone can understand.
- Its failure mode is the law of triviality: deliberation gravitates to the formal details everyone can have an opinion on — section titles, a heading font, the order of two equal items — while the hard, ambiguous substantive misfit goes unchallenged, and the resulting consensus feels like correctness.
- Variant Review Board
- Its failure mode is design by committee — the board debates trivia, blocks by default, and becomes a political bottleneck, the "coherence policing" trap; bikeshedding
This sourceShows a committee spending disproportionate time debating an easily understood triviality while giving a complex, consequential proposal little scrutiny.
- Its failure mode is design by committee — the board debates trivia, blocks by default, and becomes a political bottleneck, the "coherence policing" trap; bikeshedding
Verification¶
Does it exist? Not checked yet. This entry carries no identifier to resolve. It was extracted from the citation as written in the article, normalized, and deduplicated against the rest of the registry.
Does it back the claim? Not recorded. Neither this nor any other of the 4 citations of this work carries a recorded support check.
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 2 other ways.
- https://books.google.com/books/about/Parkinson_s_Law_Or_the_Pursuit_of_Progre.html?id=CuxrHAAACAAJ ×1
- https://search.worldcat.org/title/Parkinson%27s-law-or-the-pursuit-of-progress/oclc/1913959 ×1
Registry ID ref:e30f348673a8 · see in the full table