Cognitive Biases and Agile Architecture

At the time of writing this, Wikipedia’s “Cognitive bias codex” has more than 200 entries, and it feels to me like Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” is referenced in every other conference talk I’m watching. It’s official: Human beings are just not the rational thinkers we like to think we are.

When we approach software architecture in an agile way, we are trying to embrace the uncertainty that comes with all software delivery, but also to be diligent about the decisions that are harder to change later. In this talk, I will go through just a few of the cognitive biases that can trip us up as architects when we are making these decisions, and how to soften their potentially negative impact.