How groupthink can influence a software team negatively, and what to do about it.

1. Agile Teams:
Advocating Quality When
Collaboration becomes
Groupthink
Gerie Owen

3. What you will learn
• What is groupthink and how to identify it
• How groupthink can make an agile team less effective and compromise
quality
• How to counteract groupthink using organizational behavior theory and
practice

4. Once Upon A Time...

6. What is Groupthink?

7. What is Groupthink?
• Groupthink - A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are
deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for
unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative
courses of action.
- Irving Janis. Victims of Groupthink. 1972, p. 9

8. Characteristics of Groupthink

9. Groupthink in Agile Teams
• The illusion of invulnerability
• Velocity and capacity overestimated, yet agreed upon during Agile estimation
sessions
• The team is consistently in agreement with little discussion during daily
standups
• Collective rationalization and self-censorship during meetings and team
discussions, especially when voting on Retrospective discussion issues

10. Groupthink
How and Why

11. How does Groupthink Happen?
• Informational Signals
o Group members withhold differing information out
of respect for information that has already been
provided
• Social Pressures
o Group members withhold contradictory
information because they fear disapproval or
sanctions
• Influence of Strong Leaders

12. Why does Groupthink Happen?
• Group members’ mindsets impede critical thinking
• Group interaction amplifies individual biases
• Group Discussions dissolve into Deliberation Failures

13. Mindsets
Group Members’ Mindsets Impede Critical Thinking

14. What is a mindset?
• Developed by psychologist Carol Dweck
• How we mentally approach life and its challenges
o Why brains and talent don’t bring success
o How they can stand in the way of it
o Why praising brains and talent doesn’t foster self-esteem and
accomplishment, but jeopardizes them

15. What is a mindset
• Broadly categorized in one of two ways
o Fixed
o Growth

16. Characteristics of a fixed mindset
• We are either smart or dumb
• We have to continually prove ourselves
• Failure is a personal reflection on our intelligence

17. Characteristics of a growth
mindset
• We can work to improve our intelligence and abilities
• What we have now is only a starting point
• We accept failure as a learning process

18. Implications of a fixed mindset
• I did my job right; someone else screwed up
• That’s not a bug, so I didn’t miss it
• My test cases are complete
• You can’t ship this software

19. Implications of a growth mindset
• I always have more to learn
• I missed that bug, and I worked to understand why
• I can adapt my testing approach to new trends
• I advise decision makers on risks of release
software

20. Fixed mindsets can lead to
groupthink

21. Groups Amplify Biases
Group interaction amplifies individual biases

22. Groups Amplify Biases
oIn decision making
• Representativeness
oPeople tend to make judgements about situations
based on how similar the situation under
consideration is to others with which they are
familiar.
• Confirmation Bias
oPeople consider on the information which supports
what they have decided is true.

23. Groups Amplify Biases
oPlanning projects:
• Sunk Cost
oPeople tend to make decisions on additional
spending based on how much has already been
spent.
• Planning Fallacy
oPredictions of how much time will be needed to
complete a task display an optimism bias and as a
result, are underestimated.

24. Failures in Deliberation

25. Cascade Effect
• Because of the human desire to conform, group members will agree with the
views of the initial speakers without critically assessing their own and later
speakers ideas.

26. Polarization
• Group members may start out with moderate views on an issue but as
opposite points of view emerge, moderate views tend to move to extremes
as members focus on only the information supporting their initial view.

27. Groupthink in Agile Teams
• Agile self-organized teams are cohesive units
o Usually physically insulated from the mainstream
• Despite agile servant leadership, Informal leaders emerge
o Different personalities
o Different leadership styles
o Differing types of influence
• All these factors set the stage for groupthink

28. Groupthink Impacts Quality
• Focus on Quality is often the “minority” view
o Those advocating are:
• subjected to social and leadership pressures
• Impacted by cascade effects and polarization
• Biases Amplify a Lack of Focus on Quality
o Planning Fallacy
• Time constraints placed on testing
o Framing
• Risk of limited testing is presented in a way that the group accepts limited testing

29. Managing Groupthink

30. Managing Groupthink
• Individually
o Manage our own biases and mindsets
• Internally
o From within the team
• Externally
o From outside the team

31. Managing Groupthink Individually
• Listen to team members
o Listen 80% of the time, talk 20%
• Listen to yourself
o What bothers you about this decision?
o Voice it?
• Manage Your Mindset

32. Once Upon A Time...

33. A Tester Asked...

34. Is this a bug?
• We filed a bug entitled “Can we say f*** in an application?”

35. Manage Groupthink Internally
• Establish a Group “Growth” Mindset
• Rotate responsibility for leading the discussion so that those with the
strongest opinions or the most information are not always heard from first.
• Withhold discussion until each team member has given their opinion
• Use Scrum Planning Poker
• Appoint a “devil’s advocate” for all decisions including testing.

36. Advocating quality From Within
the Self-Organized Team
• Become a Quality Evangelist
o Be the Anxious Leader by Focusing attention on Risk
o Instill a responsibility for quality among ALL developers
o Challenge ALL Developers to be critical evaluators of the quality of the work
product
o Include Testing Requirements in the Definition of Done

37. Manage Groupthink Externally
• Managers can influence the team’s self organization
• Glenda Eoyang based CDE theory on organizational behavior
• CDE or Container Difference and Exchange are factors that
influence teams
o How a team self-organizes
o Thinks, and
o Acts as a group

38. The Container
• The container is creates the bounds within which
the system forms
• Agile Team Containers:
o Physical space
o Scope of Responsibility of the team
o Size of the team
o Department/Division within the Company
o Professional Communities of Practice

39. The Difference
• Difference refers to the individual characteristics of the
team members and this affects the team’s interactions.
• Agile Team Differences:
o Technical backgrounds and specializations of the developers
o Domain knowledge, length of service in the Company, gender, education
o Individual approach to learning
o Individual approach to problem-solving

40. The Exchange
• The exchange is how the group members interact among
themselves and with their stakeholders
o Agile Team Exchanges:
• Who provides and receives information
• How information is provided and received
oFor example: Active and respectful or Passive and
dismissing

41. Using CDE…Evaluate the Factors
• What containers, differences and exchanges affect the team?
• Are these containers, differences and exchanges appropriate in terms of
size, scope, level of influence?
• What impact does each container, difference and exchanges have on the
team?
• Is the impact positive, negative, neutral?
• What container, difference or exchange is causing the biggest negative
impact?
• What change or changes can be made to that
container/difference/exchange?

42. Examples of CDE
• Changing the Container
o Professional Community: Groupthink may be occurring because the team is not exposed to cutting
edge ideas on testing
o Send team members to conferences, user groups etc. to instill the importance of quality
• Changing the Difference
o Groupthink may be happening because one team members has a strong personality and is not
committed to quality and others won’t express opposing opinions.
o Add an equally strong-willed team member or remove the team member from the team.
• Changing the Exchange:
o Groupthink may be happening because the team is not getting enough feedback on quality in the
sprint reviews.
o Make sure the stakeholders to whom quality is most important are invited to the sprint review
meetings

43. Summary
• Groupthink is a danger for any specialized and close-knit group
• When Agile teams engage in groupthink, quality may be compromised.
• Managers and leaders can counteract groupthink by using CDE to influence
the team’s self-organization
• Collaborate as a group, but think as an individual

44. Meet Davis

46. References:
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck, 2006.
Facilitating Organizational Change, Olson and Eoyang, 2001.
Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum, Cohn, 2009.
Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman, 2011
Victims of Groupthink, Janis, 1972
Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter, Sunstein and Hastie,
2015