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author | Douglas Naphas <douglasnaphas@gmail.com> | 2020-02-18 16:41:41 -0500 |
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committer | GitHub <noreply@github.com> | 2020-02-18 16:41:41 -0500 |
commit | 4d5ad3c0c0a9305545eb2573eb71d0e4efd61087 (patch) | |
tree | a7374cc24290f1d11950d940303736f8c52d6c16 | |
parent | aaa4e8a6437f1f7c72c77faebe57e507db58252b (diff) |
Add nuance to the reference to Yak Shaving
Yak Shaving refers to not just a distracting activity, but one that is part of a chain of activities that need to be done before the task at hand can be done. So the activity serving as the distraction is required and is not necessarily trivial, distinguishing it from Bike Shedding.
Some references emphasizing the chain-of-prerequisites aspect of Yak Shaving:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrVbNNOTNus
http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old-archive/gsb-archive/gsb2000-02-11.html
I heard, but could not find on recollection, a talk on YouTube from either a Dev Ops conference or a Terraform conference where a parable like the following was related to explain the definition:
> You need to change a light bulb. But you don't have a ladder. Your neighbor certainly has one. But they will never lend you their ladder until you return the yak wool sweater that you borrowed from them. Which you lost. But you have a yak in your backyard. So you go out and shave your yak, so you can knit a replacement sweater, so you can borrow a ladder, so you can change a lightbulb.
-rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
1 files changed, 1 insertions, 1 deletions
@@ -460,7 +460,7 @@ This law suggests that groups will give far more time and attention to trivial o The common fictional example used is that of a committee approving plans for nuclear power plant, who spend the majority of their time discussing the structure of the bike shed, rather than the far more important design for the power plant itself. It can be difficult to give valuable input on discussions about very large, complex topics without a high degree of subject matter expertise or preparation. However, people want to be seen to be contributing valuable input. Hence a tendency to focus too much time on small details, which can be reasoned about easily, but are not necessarily of particular importance. -The fictional example above led to the usage of the term 'Bike Shedding' as an expression for wasting time on trivial details. An alternative term is 'Yak Shaving'. +The fictional example above led to the usage of the term 'Bike Shedding' as an expression for wasting time on trivial details. A related term is '[Yak Shaving](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving),' which connotes a seemingly irrelevant activity that is part of a long chain of prerequisites to the main task. ### The Unix Philosophy |