The cognitive biases that influence product development decisions

Don’t worry, we’re all biased in one way or another!

Whenever people tell you “you’re biased,” your immediate reaction might be to be offended. “How dare they,” you might think to yourself. “I am not biased and pay particular attention to being fair, open, and honest about everything.”

However, the reality is that the chances are that you are biased because, ultimately, we all are. The important thing to remember is that we’re all biased and should adjust for this.

In general, a bias can be described as something that will place a disproportionate weight either for or against a particular idea or a thing, and can be inherent or cultivated and will usually lead to an individual behaving in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair.

The concept of cognitive bias was first introduced by researchers Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972. Since then, researchers have described a number of different biases that affect decision-making in a wide range of areas. In this post, we’ll look at a few that can heavily influence the delivery of a product.

When doing product development, deciding a system’s architecture, or just writing code, our decisions are impacted by our bias. Let’s consider the…