In one of my previous posts, I shared a quick note about Agile, and I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the responses on LinkedIn; the post went viral, reaching over 2k impressions.
The statement of the post was clear; over the years, our tech industry has created many nonsense techniques (Agile, DDD, TDD, Fractal Programming, etc.) that engineers continue to blindness agree with, creating an erroneous sense of usability and, unfortunately, making software development and innovation harder than it is.
After spending more than ten years in this industry, having worked in four different countries and more than nine companies, I was not impressed by the responses from those involved in the Agile community.
Since I have no intention of replying to those responses, I’m creating this post so we can reflect together.
Everyone is biased because we are human; my posts, my opinions, my articles, and also your responses, and that is a fact. So then, we should ask:
How do you deal with opinions that you disagree with?
Well, the answer seems straightforward, but it’s not. Because humans tend to interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs and values.
The effects of Confirmation bias in our lives are dangerous; it hurts our decision-making process and restricts us from thinking and acting efficiently.
The simple hack I created myself to avoid this mind misjudgment:
Quantify the amount of believability and significance of any data (or information) you interact with.
By default, when you give a higher value to those variables, you are most likely to be affected by this bias. Consequently, any internal agreement or disagreement will be reinforced, so you must carefully consider reviewing the data source, the information, and your opinions again and again.
That’s the best framework you can use in your day-by-day scientific/engineering life to shape your insights and gather more wisdom from today’s world.
So, going back to the principal reason for this post, you don’t feel you are wasting your time reading it. When you agree to disagree, think wisely first; use the above mind hack, and always remember the internet has memory, and for certain types of people, unwise responses are easy to identify.