Cognitive Bias 2018 - Agile DC

Editor's Notes

1. So Australia,  When you think of Australia, what comes to mind? You probably would think of The Sydney Opera House, Kangaroos and Koalas. But do any of you know the drop bear? The drop is is the koala’s less popular more aggressive cousin. 
2. The drop bear, if you have no idea what it is, is a cunning little creature. Deceptive as it looks like a koala but dangerous with it’s sharp teeth, and sharp claws laden with clymidia. They are quiet, patiently waiting on top of trees and drops from one for the kill.
3. Now I kind of feel sometimes that our brains work the same way too, quietly deceptive in sometimes .    As a coach, a scrum master, champions of Agile we see ourselves as someone who embraces the agile mindset, we keep an open mind, we value people and interactions! Yet I have found in several situations that things get the better of me, I lose sight of objectivity, and fall into situations where I do not make great judgement. I listen to my gut, make quick assumptions but unfortunately the wrong one. Looks like a koala, may not necessarily be a koala. Our intuition, our gut feel, may feel right but may not necessarily be right. 
4. One situation in particular was when I ended up working with a new team in a new that was all men, in an organisation that we could say is more traditional. You see at this time, as a consultant I just finished an engagement with a company that is probably considered one of Melbourne’s more Agile fluent organisation. The team I was working with was a good mix of people, different genders, different age.  And then I now have this new team of all men, mostly older than me in an organisation previously owned by the government -- and I would think regardless of where you live you have an idea what that means. I found myself being unhappy with this new team. I missed my old team, they felt more like my people. We talk about things other than work, we socialise and work just doesn’t feel like work. Working with this all men team on the other hand, going to work felt like a chore. We barely talk about things outside work and quite frankly to me they all seem anti-social.
5. It was a surprise to me however that during one of our retrospectives this group were actually feeling the same way. The felt we could be better as a group. Turns out I misjudged them, yes they were men and older but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are anti-social. And if I am being honest, I am a key contributor to this bland vanilla way of working as I appear as too standoffish, blue hair and all I stood out from the team but also isolated myself. I was guilty of my own biases about the organisation, my own gender biases and was guilty of a cognitive bias of stereotyping.  It was an alarm bell, a reality check and so I felt the need to dig in more and try to understand these cognitive biases.  What are cognitive biases?
6. To understand cognitive biases one must understand heuristics. Picture a tiger in front of this room. Imagine instead of me you have a tiger, a big ferocious one just standing here looking at you. Chances are you wouldn’t think twice but would head out quickly to the door running for safety. You would probably not stop and assess the entire situation to calculate the probability of you surviving should you decide to say wait and listen if the tiger has something worthwhile to say about Agile teams. Your brain would make a decision quickly and without using much mental effort.
7. STOP and read it with them In a study, two psychologists Tversky and Kahneman tested a group of people, showing this statement about Linda.  “Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply con- cerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and participated in anti- nuclear demonstrations.”  Given that first statement, they then asked the same group of people to determine among (a) or (b) is most probable, (a) Linda is a bank teller or  (b) Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement.  Although the connection between the first statement and (a) or (b) cannot more likely than either between 80% and 90% of the test subjects choose b.
8. This is called heuristics; mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that help us make decisions quickly without spending a lot of time.  Heuristics are extremely helpful most of the time, as in the case of fleeing from a ferocious feline but they can lead to errors in judgment when people rely on heuristic principles rather than the complex task of assessing probabilities as in when the subjects jumped into the conclusion about Linda. 
9.   These errors are called cognitive biases.   This limitation of thinking is a result of our attempt to simplify information using filters of personal experience or preference in order to arrive at a solution or reaction quickly, in most cases unconsciously. 
10. Stereotyping stems from the tendency of people to identify themselves as members of certain groups but not others. These associations could be of having the same age, gender, ethnicity, religion, hometown, coffee preference. Logically, when we like ourselves we therefore like the group we associate with. The larger issue, however, is that own-group preference often results in liking other groups less. 
11. It Lowers Morale and the motivation of the person being stereotyped  Impedes Collaboration as team members who act based on stereotype rather than putting faith in the abilities and effort of coworkers can impede collaboration and progress.   In a work team, stereotyping can prevent an employee from asking for support or offering it to a particular employee. A man may not ask a woman in his team for help, for instance, if he believes that she isn't capable of understanding the task and concepts because she's female. Stereotypes are convenient to use and act as time savers. But they are not accurate as based on over categorization and over generalization as such they can be disproven.
12. *Break down the generalization Break down the generalization by knowing the individual members of the team.  While time and continuous interaction with team members would potentially allow this you can assist the process by facilitating opportunities in the team to get to know each other; Retrospectives are good opportunities to hear and listen and get to know the team members and their thoughts on the team. Introduce retro games to get to know each other beyond the borders of work –  2 lies one truth is a good retrospective game to get to know facts and information about your team you wouldn’t otherwise know – I once had a developer shared the fact that she once held a heart in her hand. Creepy and odd but turns out she used to be an emergency room nurse prior to becoming a developer.  *Facilitate social activities that encourage conversations and collaboration  Knowing people outside the confines of work even just with occasional team lunches or coffees facilitate greater collaborations among co-workers who might otherwise rarely talk to each other.  
13. A recent study by professors in Cornell University revealed that teams that eat together perform better. They have conducted a study for over 15 months with firemen in a large city with over 50 firehouses. Study showed that the platoons that ate together most often get higher marks and conversely the platoons that did not got lower performance ratings. 
14. Confirmation bias also known as selective thinking bias or myside bias from its name is one’s tendency to cherry pick, favour, recall and interpret information that coincides with one’s preconceived beliefs and hypotheses.  This type of bias can prevent us from objectively looking at information we have been presented and can also influence the decisions we make which potentially can lead to poor or faulty choices. Going back to the idea of heuristics, our brains use confirmation bias when we are presented with evidence we need to evaluate, especially in the case when the information is complicated or unclear and requires a great deal of mental energy. This saves the time needed to make decisions, in particular when under 
15. Jane experiment  Snyder and Cantor (1979) gave participants a description of a person called Jane that included mixed items showing her as introverted and sometimes as extroverted.  A couple of days later, half were asked to assess her for an extroverted job (real estate agent) and the rest asked to assess her for a librarian's job.  Each group were better at remembering the attributes that supported the job for which they were assessing. This implied they were using a positive-test strategy when trying to remember things about Jane.  
16. Studies also show that when it comes to reading news, or news articles we tend to spend more time on items that adhere to our existing beliefs, Conversely, things that do not align on what believe in or think, we browse, skip or just call it fake news. Quite counterintuitive in terms of learning isnt it?
17. Stop and read Indeed we humans, we appreciate and like it when we have other people believe in us and proving us right.
18. As we all know communication is a key aspect of running an effective Agile team and one key ceremony that facilitates this is our daily standups. Despite the fact that this is a short ceremony and it is significant it could shape how the team effectively allocates its time in order to accomplish the project goals. Confirmation bias can affect team standups by influencing team leaders or members to focus on information that aligns on how well or poorly the iteration is going.  As a result team leaders and or members end up missing out on information that potentially needs to be corrected or actioned upon, conversely a negative mindset can also lead a team leader to falsely correct a  team that is working within the expected bounds 
19. SURFACE more information. -- both that support or contradicts our beliefs Walk the board approach vs round robin While round robin standups, where in each member of a team would share what they are planning  to work on for the day works for some teams, I find the “walking the board” approach by walking the board, starting from the rightmost column to the leftmost column and talking about each card provides an opportunity for everyone to know and understand what is needed to progress the card to done. As information being communicated is anchored  on the different states/columns the tendency to miss out information is reduced.  Speed Dating, Follow up Dates & After Parties Consider stand ups as a speed dating. Use that window to know and understand if you need to take the conversation further “offline”. Make a mental note or better yet an actual note of the things that needs to be clarified after the standup and have that follow up “date” with your team mate.  Potentially that could  lead to after parties too –  after parties are wider team discussions from items that were discussed during the standup.  This could be regular after parties – such as a code reviews, regular design decision discussions or it can be adhoc ones such as discussing the outcome of a spike a team member has just finished working on. 
20. To illustrate the IKEA effect, two groups were asked to bid for furniture with one group receiving a box with pre-assembled items and another bidding on a box with the items they have worked on. The result shows that the group who has worked on and successfully assembled the items was willing to pay more for their box. This test was also repeated on other subjects involving legos and origamis, all resulting to the same outcome. The IKEA effect suggests that labor, specifically that which results to successful completion increases the attributed value of any item. While studies used furniture, legos and origamis this is no different for software, products, processes.  
21. The idea behind the IKEA is not necessarily bad, in fact Marketing and Sales people leverage on this.  The Betty Crocker effect coined after consumer psychologists in General Mills figured out that including an extra step of adding an egg in the Betty Crocker cake mix made it more marketable. It resolved the idea of guilt from housewives then who feel guilty for not making the cake from scratch.  The “investment” in time and effort in adding the egg demonstrated the act of of love in baking.  
22. sunk cost fallacy is the thought that anything you’ve already invested in deserves greater investment even if it was poor investment in the first place and even if the investment is unlikely to lead to the desired outcome. It can affect team productivity by potentially holding the team and it’s resources into doing activities which are not contributing to achieving the project goal – time and resources which should otherwise be devoted to other things.  To limit the IKEA effect and prevent effort justification or even sunk-cost fallacy consider these approaches, Design Decision After-parties  - Encourage the team to have regular design decision after parties post standup. This ensures regular and early feedback from the team. Early feedback also means that the invested time and effort and potential emotional attachment is reduced.  Spikes – use spikes for evaluating a solution, a design or technology. Spikes time-boxed which therefore means the investment is controlled. Having a clear acceptance criteria for the spike also makes the conversation and decision making easier as it is based on facts and clear criteria and again less of the emotional investment.  Lastly ensure that the project goal and product vision is well communicated & understood by the team. A product vision that resonates within the teams serves as anchors for making project decisions and the true north for setting the overall direction. 
23. Woody Zuill. Woody Zuill is an independent Agile Guide and Coach and has been programmingcomputers for 35+ years. He is a pioneer of the Mob Programming approach to teamwork in software development, and is considered one of the founders of the "#NoEstimates" discussion on Twitter.
24. There are 175 listed cognitive biases in Wikipedia and surely it will take time and patience to read and understand each one let alone identify how to dampen or offset these biases. But like any problem at hand, awareness is key and knowing such biases do exist is a step in helping ourselves to be more equipped in dealing with them. Woody Zuill. Woody Zuill is an independent Agile Guide and Coach and has been programmingcomputers for 35+ years. He is a pioneer of the Mob Programming approach to teamwork in software development, and is considered one of the founders of the "#NoEstimates" discussion on Twitter.
25. There are 175 listed cognitive biases in Wikipedia and surely it will take time and patience to read and understand each one let alone identify how to dampen or offset these biases. But like any problem at hand, awareness is key and knowing such biases do exist is a step in helping ourselves to be more equipped in dealing with them. Buster Benson, a senior product manger in Slack during his paternity leave painstakingly listed all 175 cognitive biases in Wikipedia and categorised them. Surely it will take several paternity/maternity leaves to fully understand each one let alone identify ways to mitigate their effects – but awareness is key! Continuously reading on and discovering cognitive biases will help us be more equipped in dealing with them and correcting ourselves.
26. Now, a lot of the practices mentioned here may not necessarily be new. In fact some of these things we do but don’t fully recognise the importance Apart from awareness of the biases, one key take away which I hope you remember about this talk is a better understanding of why we do different practices within our teams. It is one thing to say team let’s walk the wall from now on, but an understanding of the bigger things at play, setting ourselves for better success if we  reduce the risk of missing out information due to our own biases would perhaps get as more buy-in from the team. 
27. Again, these are just three biases, there are plenty more out there to watch out for. Beware of the drop bear!