How Cognitive Biases Affect our Software Architectures
summary
Explains how specific biases — confirmation bias, availability heuristic, zero risk bias and outcome bias — derail architecture choices and debugging; gives concrete fixes: use threat modeling for security trade-offs, write decision records that capture problem, rationale and anticipated downsides, run small POCs (example: choosing Reflux then migrating to Redux) and treat design choices as hypotheses to test with experiments, pairing or rubber‑ducking to avoid chasing improbable causes.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction to biases
- 1:38Cognitive biases overview
- 3:27Impact of uncertainty
- 5:55Risk assessment biases
- 8:04Strategies for mitigation
- 9:56Biases in technical tasks
- 11:41Statistical fallacies
- 14:23Scientific approach to work
- 17:13Understanding outcome bias
- 21:11Decision records and models
- 24:55Additional common biases
- 26:58Redefining confidence
- 31:33Q&A session
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