The devops field guide to cognitive biases

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devops field guide to understanding cognitive biases (2nd edition)

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Your current iPhone crashes

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Your current iPhone is slower

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Time to upgrade!

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Why?

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Apple has made my device slower!

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Clustering illusion

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See patterns in randomness

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See correlations where there are none

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Your device has always been that slow

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Clustering illusion is a Cognitive Bias

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What is a cognitive bias?

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“Mental shortcut”

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Timeliness Accuracy

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Problem solving

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Problem solving Heuristic

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Problem solving Heuristic Correct result

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Problem solving Heuristic Correct result Rational choice

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Problem solving

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Problem solving Heuristic

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Problem solving Heuristic Incorrect result

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Problem solving Heuristic Incorrect result Cognitive bias!

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Heuristic?

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Pattern matching

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What helped your ancestors survive!

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March 27, 1977

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Control tower

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Control tower ✈

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Control tower ✈ ✈

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Control tower ✈ ✈

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Control tower ✈ ✈

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Control tower ✈ ✈

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Control tower ✈ ✈

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KLM: 234 passengers 16 crew

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Pan Am: 326 passengers 9 crew

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Frozen in place

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Control tower ✈ ✈

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Control tower ✈ ✈

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Control tower ✈ ✈

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Normalcy bias

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Before a disaster:

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• Underestimate:

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• Underestimate: • risk

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• Underestimate: • risk • effects

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• Underestimate: • risk • effects • preparation

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“Because something bad has never happened, it never will happen”

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During a disaster:

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• Response:

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• Response: • slow reaction

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• Response: • slow reaction • seek validation

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• Response: • slow reaction • seek validation • optimistic interpretation

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Reaction steps

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• Cognition

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• Cognition • Perception

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• Cognition • Perception • Comprehension

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• Cognition • Perception • Comprehension • Decision

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• Cognition • Perception • Comprehension • Decision • Implementation

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• Cognition • Perception • Comprehension • Decision • Implementation • Movement

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These are complex tasks

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You cannot skip these tasks

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You can practice to make them more automatic

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People who don't practice deliberate during the disaster

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• 70% freeze

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• 70% freeze • 15% freak out

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• 70% freeze • 15% freak out • 15% react to situation

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No practice == higher MTTR

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Counter this behaviour

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drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill

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Normalcy bias has your head in the sand. Drill to react when disaster is at hand.

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see it go over here

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was actually here

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Confirmation bias

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Seek information that reinforces position

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Ignore alternative explanations

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Interpret ambiguous information in favour of existing positions!

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• Who is clueless enough to think Colbert is a conservative? • Why do conservatives like Stephen Colbert? • Ohio study finds conservatives believe Colbert dislikes liberalism

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

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Debugging code

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My code is perfect!

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I know the problem is in this other library

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I just can't find it!

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*30 minutes pass*

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The bug was in my code

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Counter this behaviour

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Take opposing viewpoints

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Is your conclusion negative? It could be biased.

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Confirmation reinforces, You ignore other sources

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Provisioning automation @

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18 months

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• Provisioning: • We're being hurt badly by VMware provs!

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• Provisioning: • We're being hurt badly by VMware provs! • R&D: • We'll automate that now!

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2 weeks later

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• Provisioning: • We're being hurt badly by load balancer provs!

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• Provisioning: • We're being hurt badly by load balancer provs! • R&D: • We'll automate that now!

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1 week later

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• Provisioning: • We're being hurt badly by VMware provs!

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• Provisioning: • We're being hurt badly by VMware provs! • R&D: • We'll automate that now!

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4 weeks later

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• Provisioning: • We're being hurt badly by EC2 provs!

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• Provisioning: • We're being hurt badly by EC2 provs! • R&D: • We'll automate that now!

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18 months

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What is happening?

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Working on the thing closest to us that hurts us most.

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But it's not the biggest problem overall!

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Would you work like this?

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18 months

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Outcome bias

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Hindsight bias

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"knew it all along" effect

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memory distortion distortion

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Judgement

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“You were capable of preventing a bad outcome”

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Failure!

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Talk about events in the context of the outcome Failure!

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Bad outcomes come from bad decisions

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• MH17 tragedy reveals need for flight path overhaul • Flight MH17 took abandoned flight path • MH17 flightpath questioned as Malaysia mourns second airline tragedy • Flight MH17 ‘could have avoided Ukrainian airspace for $66 per passenger’ • Why was MH17’s flight path over a conflict zone?

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• news.com.au • Sky News • ABC • Daily Mail • PBS

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Taints all interactions

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Hindsight bias is your culture killer

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Monitoring thresholds

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Backend HTTP Port 81

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“I don’t want that thing that woke me last night to wake me again”

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“I’m going to make that problem go away”

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But...

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How often does that alert fire?

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What percentage of all alerts is that?

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Are there other alerts that are more frequent?

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What makes this alert the most important to fix?

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+----------------------------+---------------+-----------------+---------------------+ | 2013-07-01T00:00:00+09:30 - 2013-07-31T23:59:59+09:30 | +----------------------------+---------------+-----------------+---------------------+ | Check | # of entities | Critical | Total | +----------------------------+---------------+-----------------+---------------------+ | Memory Utilisation | 85 | 9h 44m 31s | 2mo 5d 8h 2m 5s | | Load | 44 | 22d 2h 38m 50s | 1mo 22d 15h 51m 42s | | ** DISK Utilisation (Win) | 41 | 5m 0s | 1mo 19d 16h 2m 7s | | ** Disk Utilisation (Unix) | 43 | 3h 34m 2s | 1mo 1d 18h 24m 28s | | PING | 35 | 1mo 16h 16m 43s | 1mo 16h 16m 43s | | HOST | 37 | 1mo 2h 25m 52s | 1mo 2h 25m 52s | | SSH | 14 | 26d 21h 8m 33s | 26d 21h 8m 33s | | Flapper | 1 | 15d 11h 42m 16s | 15d 11h 42m 16s | | CPU Load | 5 | 8d 12h 21m 31s | 8d 13h 36m 22s | | CPU Utilisation | 30 | 1h 35m 18s | 4d 3h 17m 37s | | ** check_tcp Port | 56 | 2d 19h 25m 47s | 2d 19h 25m 47s | | RDP | 6 | 6h 34m 39s | 6h 34m 39s | | Swap Utilisation | 18 | 5h 43m 44s | 5h 43m 44s | | Frontend HTTP Port 80 | 4 | 4h 22m 14s | 4h 22m 14s | | Backend HTTPS Port 444 | 4 | 4h 20m 19s | 4h 20m 19s | | Frontend HTTPS Port 443 | 4 | 4h 20m 9s | 4h 20m 9s | | Backend HTTP Port 81 | 4 | 4h 17m 41s | 4h 17m 41s | | Disk Utilisation | 2 | 1h 45m 0s | 3h 9m 0s | | ** HTTP Regex | 5 | 11m 53s | 11m 53s | +----------------------------+---------------+-----------------+---------------------+

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Harness this behaviour

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Counterfactuals

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*we’re about to launch* “What do you think will break?”

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versus

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*imagine 5 minutes post-launch* “What just broke?”

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Counter this behaviour

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During

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• 1. collect data

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• 1. collect data • 2. analyse that data

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• 1. collect data • 2. analyse that data • 3. make decisions based on that data

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• 1. collect data • 2. analyse that data • 3. make decisions based on that data • 4. act on data, not feelings

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• 1. collect data • 2. analyse that data • 3. make decisions based on that data • 4. act on data, and feelings

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After:

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Explain in terms of foresight

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Local rationality

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“People make what they think are best decisions based on the information at hand”

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Hindsight affords us global rationality

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Hindsight blinds, Foresight finds

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Normalcy bias

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Confirmation bias

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Hindsight bias

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How vulnerable to these biases are you?

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– you, right now “I’m aware of my biases.”

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– you, right now “These don’t affect me.”

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– you, right now “I am better than average.”

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Better-than-average effect & Illusory superiority

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Bias blind spot

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• Positive attributes

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• Positive attributes • Above average

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• Negative attributes

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• Negative attributes • Below average

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Why?

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Self-esteem

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Control

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Normalcy bias has your head in the sand. Drill to react when disaster is at hand.

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Confirmation reinforces, You ignore other sources

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Hindsight blinds, Foresight finds

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Rhyme-as-reason effect

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Aesthetics affect truth

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• Fluent, Fast, Smooth

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• Fluent, Fast, Smooth • Higher value

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This is a test

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1. Read the statement once

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1. Read the statement once 2. Count the letter F

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FINAL FOLIOS SEEM TO RESULT FROM YEARS OF DUTIFUL STUDY OF TEXTS ALONG WITH YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE.

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How many did you see?

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How many did you see? The answer is 8

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Fluency heuristic

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FINAL FOLIOS SEEM TO RESULT FROM YEARS OF DUTIFUL STUDY OF TEXTS ALONG WITH YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE.

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Brain expects pattern to continue

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Brain skips other information

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Harness this behaviour

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Rhyme your mantras

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Have you learnt anything?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

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How many passes?

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What did the gorilla do?

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Did you see the curtains change colour?

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Or one of the players leave?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

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– Mark Twain “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

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Culture is made from people.

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Everyone has biases.

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Understand how you think.

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Become more rational.

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Become less rationalising.

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Be aware of bias.

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Improve ourselves.

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Culture will flow.

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I’m Lindsay @auxesis

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Thank you!

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Thank you! Liked the talk? Let @auxesis know.

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• Further reading • You Are Not So Smart – David McRaney • The field guide to understanding   human error – Sidney Dekker • Sway: The irresistible pull of irrational behavior – Ori Brafman • Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman