Cognitive Bias in the life of a Drupal developer

We human beings are rational animals. We try to think before acting or making decisions. Because of that, we can certainly identify with statements such as:

• "As an efficient developer, I don't normally let my past experiences unreasonably influence my choices of modules or tools I use."
• "As a fair team member, I equally review other people's code, regardless of who wrote it."
• "As an experienced programmer, I usually expect the same quality from the code I write as from the code I review from others."
• "As a smart engineer, I quickly identify when the path I started to develop is a bad choice and am able to drop it early in favor of other unknown alternatives."
• "As a seasoned planner, I never underestimate the time and resources needed to complete a poorly described task."
• "As an independent professional, I can always keep my career aspirations uninfluenced by stereotypical images from my environment."
• "As a reasonable adult, I don't normally let my choices be influenced by the number of people who have chosen similar options."

Right?

Well, not always. It turns out cognitive biases often make us behave in a significantly less rational way than we would expect. While this is a biological phenomenon common to all of us, it often leads us to making bad decisions, errors and unfair judgement.

In this session, we will look into some of the most common biases that affect us developers. By knowing their names and relating them to common activities we perform every day, we will gain insight about mechanisms we can use at work and in other aspects of our lives.

This session won't make you an expert on cognitive biases, but it will hopefully give you some pointers and tools to start being more aware of factors that influence the decisions we make every day.