Ever seen this in your team?

Endless debates on variable naming, code formatting, over-emphasising on clean code, or forced use of design patterns

Meanwhile, critical architecture flaws go unaddressed for months.

This is Bikeshedding (Parkinson's Law of Triviality) in action, when teams focus on trivial-but-easy topics while avoiding complex-but-important ones.

The Classic Dev Team Example

What gets attention:

"Should we name this fetchUser() or getUserData()? Let's discuss SOLID principles for this 20-line function!"

What gets ignored:

"Our 'microservice' is really a distributed monolith with 5-minute API timeouts... but we'll fix that 'later'."

Why This Happens

• Low-risk discussions (everyone feels qualified to opine on code style)
• High-complexity avoidance (few want to admit they don't understand the architecture)
• False productivity (polishing small things feels like progress)

3 Ways to Stop Bikeshedding

1. Split code reviews - Separate "architecture/design" reviews from "code style" reviews
2. Timebox trivial debates - "We have 2 minutes to pick a naming convention, then we move on"
3. Ask the key question: "Will this decision materially impact performance, scalability or maintenance?"

The hard truth: A perfectly-named function in a broken architecture is still broken. Have you seen bikeshedding derail projects? How does your team avoid it?