Meet Your Own Biases

Have you heard the word “bias” before?  Today, a lot of controversial topics surround that word and for a good reason. After all, bias is at the core of a lot of discrimination and prejudice issues in our world.

However, there are many different types of biases that influence our judgement every day and are not related with discrimination. For instance, have you heard of Loss Aversion? It states that humans experience losing something much more intensely than they do when acquiring it. It really affects our judgement, for instance, when you are contemplating on the idea of deleting an automated test! Maybe the Gambler’s fallacy influences the way you handle flaky tests? Or maybe the Spotlight Effect blocks you from driving changes in your organization?

In this workshop, we want you to experience some of these cognitive biases first-hand! After all, acknowledging that our behavior, as human beings, is impacted by these factors is the first step in learning how to improve our rational judgement. We’re also going to try to relate these behaviors with our professional lives. Maybe you can even come up with your own ideas on how cognitive biases hinder our abilities as testers and engineers.

Let’s learn together! So join us and, please, bring your cognitive biases with you!