Being a people-centric model, Agile is subject to many cognitive biases. This article explores some of the cognitive biases that are common in an Agile world.
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience. “I knew this release was bound to fail. We shouldn’t have hurried.” If you ever heard a Scrum Master mentioning this, he/she could be under the influence of a “hindsight bias.” Another scenario is when an Agile team agrees blindly with a confident-sounding (and looking) Product Owner without empirical evidence, they may be subject to the “halo effect.” Or, when a tester in good mood agrees to execute 40% higher test cases than their previous average, the tester may be experiencing “optimism bias.” I know, some of you could now be thinking: “That is what Agile is all about. We need to try out and experiment. It could be wrong, but learn lessons from it.” Agreed! But what about understanding the scientific reason for flawed decision-making, which if addressed appropriately, could minimize some of these errors? I am referring here to a psychological phenomenon called “cognitive Bias.” Cognitive bias is a well-researched area in psychology from the1970s onwards. It was originally proposed by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in a groundbreaking paper titled “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” In the field of psychology, cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them and affects the decisions and judgments that they make. Being a people-centric model, Agile is subject to many cognitive biases. It is important for an Agile leader to be aware of these biases and not allow them to impair a fair and rational decision-making process. Following are some of the cognitive biases that are common in an Agile world. Confirmation bias is favoring information that confirms our existing thoughts and beliefs. If we like Apple over Android, the information around us will appear to confirm that our choice is good. Social media has amplified this effect, and in many cases is manipulative to influence our perception by only showing us what we like to believe. In Agile, our belief that team morale and cohesion are good may be influenced by the positive signals that we decide to receive.
