How to detect bias when writing and reading about Scrum
Am I biased? I am, to a degree, ignorant of my own bias. So I created a ‘cheat sheet’ to help me detect it which I will share with you in this article. It helps me be more critical in my writing and reading, and I hope this will also be of value to other writers and readers of our community.
Together with Willem-Jan Ageling I founded Serious Scrum to support Scrum practitioners looking to share their experiences with Scrum in a constructive way; resolving their challenges like introducing Scrum to a team. We want Serious Scrum to be about improving at Scrum by practicing Scrum and exchanging experiences.
Christiaan Verwijs recently wrote a blog post asking why the ‘Agile Community’ doesn’t practice empiricism and referred to articles published with us that were lacking evidence and showed bias. Verwijs shares three questions we should ask ourselves:
- What is my evidence?
- How might I be biased?
- How can we falsify my point?
Verwijs also offers a ‘call to action’:
- As content creators, we should be clear about the evidence we use to support our claims.
- We have to recognize the quality of the evidence compared to the strength of the claim.
