BDD - Bias driven development

Despite non-technical people may think that software development is an exact science, programmers know that this is far from being true. That's also because our industry is heavily influenced by many of the most common cognitive biases: technical choices are made following hypes (pro-innovation bias) or gurus (bandwagon bias); we create homemade tools instead of using de-facto standards (not-invented-here syndrome) and fix bugs without a full understanding of the problems (placebo bias) or even we pretend that there isn't any problem at all (ostrich bias). The first step to bring software development closer to an engineering discipline is recognizing this biases and admitting that we all suffer of them.

Transcript

1. by Mario Fusco mario.fusco@gmail.com @mariofusco Bias Driven Development
2. A bias is a thinking pattern that leads to systematic mistakes of judgment
4. 1. Too much information: we are overloaded by information, so we aggressively filter. Some of the what we leave out is actually useful and important
5. 2. Not enough meaning: we imagine details that were filled in by our assumptions, and construct meaning and stories that aren't really there.
6. 3. Need to act fast: quick decisions can be seriously flawed. Some of the quick reactions and decisions we jump to are unfair and counter-productive
7. 4. What should we remember?: our memory reinforces errors. Some of the stuff we remember for later just makes all of the above systems more biased
9. Framing effect: people react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented
11. Choice-supportive bias: when you choose something, you tend to feel positive about it, even if that choice has flaws
12. Confirmation bias: seeking and prioritising information that confirms your existing beliefs
13. Well traveled road effect: travelers estimate the time taken to traverse routes differently depending on their familiarity with the route. Frequently traveled routes are assessed as taking a shorter time than unfamiliar routes
14. Overconfidence: some of us are too confident about their own abilities, and this causes us to take greater risks in our daily lives The amount of damages that you can cause with a wrong decision is proportional to the level of overconfidence with which you take it
15. Law of triviality (or bikeshedding): giving disproportionate weight to trivial issues
16. Narrative bias: refers to tendency to make sense of the world through stories
17. Bandwagon effect: believing or doing something because people around you believe or do it
18. Placebo effect: when simply believing that something will have a certain effect on you causes it to have that effect
19. Ostrich effect: the decision to ignore dangerous or negative information by “burying” one’s head in the sand, like an ostrich
20. Not invented here syndrome IKEA effect: consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created
21. Pro-innovation bias: when a proponent of an innovation tends to overvalue its usefulness and undervalue its limitations
22. Semmelweis effect is a metaphor for the tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms
23. Dunning- Kruger Effect: unskilled individuals overestimate their abilities and experts underestimate theirs
24. The effect of the Dunning-Kruger Effect
25. Availability heuristic: overestimate the importance of information that is easy to recall
26. Bias blind spot: we recognize the impact of biases on the judgement of others, while failing to see the impact of biases on our decisions
27. A non-repeatable process producing few great successes and many miserable failures We got what we deserved for making software development a craftsmanship instead of an engineering discipline
28. We are engineers, not craftsmen or even worse artists
29. In engineering art is (at most) the mean not the goal
30. Those who cannot develop software, teach software development methodologies
31. Life is easier on giants' shoulders It's a curious thing about software industry: not only we do not learn from our mistakes, we also don't learn from our successes - Keith Braithwaite
32. Listen to listen, not to take a pause and think what you'll say next
33. Newer does NOT always mean better
34. Measure Measure Measure
35. Enlarge your professional toolbox
36. I said professional = … and yes, I am biased too
37. Dubito ergo Cogito