About The Marvels and the Flaws of Intuitive Thinking and how they impact Business Requirements Gathering activities

1. About “The Marvels and the Flaws of
Intuitive Thinking” and how they impact
Business Requirements Gathering
Inspired by
Daniel Kahneman’s Presentation
At Edge.org/conversations
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2. Motivation
• Kahneman argues that the brain is governed by two general
types of thinking processes: System 1 and System 2
– System 1 is the intuitive, unconscious thinking process that
humans do instantaneously and effortlessly
– System 2 is the conscious and much slower logical, orderly
computation that applies rules in well defined stages
• Business Requirements Elicitation, in its Requirements
Gathering stage, involves interactions between the Business
Analyst and various stakeholders in a System 1-like fashion
• This presentation first summarizes relevant characteristics of
Kahneman’s System 1.
• The last part of the presentation shows examples of System 1
manifestations during Business Requirements Gathering and
possible actions to mitigate their side effects 2
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3. Experiment
• “This is a report of the study that was carried out in a kitchen at
some university in the UK, and that kitchen has an honesty system
where people put in money when they buy tea and milk, and this is
per liter of milk consumed, and somebody had the bright idea of
putting a poster right on top of where the milk and the tea are, and
of changing the poster every week. You can see that the posters
alternate week by week, they alternate flowers and eyes, and then
you can see how much people are paying. It starts from the bottom,
which is the biggest effect, and this thing speaks for itself. It shows
the enormous amount of control that there is, a thing that people
are completely unaware of. Nobody knew that the posters had
anything to do with anything. The posters are eyes, the eyes are
symbols, somebody is watching, and that has an effect and you
contribute more.”
Daniel Kahneman, 2011
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4. 4
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5. System 1: the mental shotgun
• Perception and intuition are very closely linked…many of the
rules that apply to perception also apply to intuition
• We see a world that is vastly more coherent than the world
actually is. “What you see is all there is” is a mechanism that
is not sensitive to the information it does not have.
• It is a mechanism that takes what ever information is available
and makes the best story out of that…The confidence that
people have in their beliefs is a judgment of the coherence of
the story that the mind has managed to construct. People
tend to have great belief on stories that have very little
evidence to support them.
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6. System 1: the mental shotgun
• The difference between averages and sums is very important. There
are variables that are “sum like” and variables that are “average
like”. Economic value is a “sum like” variable and so is probability
but we judge probability as an “average like” variable, and that
creates a lot of flawed judgments.
• Similarity is easy for the brain to compute but [computing]
probability is much harder for the brain.
• People tend to be asked a question but they answer another
question almost instantly and unconsciously. This is a type of
mental activity (Shotgun) that computes a lot more than it is
required to. Sometime one of these parallel computation is so
much faster than the one that would answer the actual question
that it generates the wrong answer.
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7. Another Experiment
• The brain is very efficient at dealing with
individual particular cases but it is not good at
dealing with ensembles or percentages.
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8. System 1 Manifestations during Business
Requirements Elicitation activities
• The effect of “Watching eyes”:
– Unconsciously, during Requirements Gathering
meetings, people adjust their behavior if they get
even the slightest sense that they are being
“Watched”.
– As a Business Analyst you want to make sure that
any “Watching eye” watches for signs of
Collaboration among meeting participants. Refer
to the presentation “Achieving consensus in
business requirements elicitation meetings”
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9. System 1 Manifestations during Business
Requirements Elicitation activities
• “What you see is all there is” syndrome:
– As Requirements gathering meetings proceed, each participant
continuously creates in his/her own mind a story of what they believe
the information captured so far is. Each story is likely to be heavily
biased from one participant to the next.
– One of the Business Analyst’s most critical contribution in this stage is
to capture and communicate with as much fidelity as possible the
information that was actually provided by all meeting participants.
– Many Business Analysts mistakenly think that this is acting like a
faithful type writer and that it diminishes the value of the BA. Au
Contraire, Kahneman System1 is working overtime in each
participant’s mind; “What you see is all there is” is a mechanism that
is not sensitive to the information it does not have or that it failed to
recognize it has.
– It is the BA’s responsibility to insure that false beliefs are not
cultivated. Accurately capturing and communicating the information
recorded to all participants can prevent such pitfall. 9
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10. System 1 Manifestations during Business
Requirements Elicitation activities
• Economic value is a “sum like” variable and so is probability but we
judge probability as an “average like” variable, and that creates a lot
of flawed judgments:
– Prioritization of Requirements is probably the hardest exercise
to conduct if you agree that it should be an economic decision
– Stakeholders will tell the Business Analyst which Requirements
they believe are the most important during Requirements
Gathering meetings.
– The BA should again faithfully record those value judgments
without expressing their own but the BA must make provision
for another working session that will address Requirements
prioritization from a much more rational, economic and/or
probabilistic angle.
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11. System 1 Manifestations during Business
Requirements Elicitation activities
• Getting an answer to a question other than the
one you asked:
– This is possibly one of the most common source of
frustration to Business Analysts.
– Properly designed Visual Aids can be very useful to
avoid this situation. The goal is for the visual aid to
create an easily identifiable context for the question
asked.
– Example of context specifying Visual Aids are: process
steps lists or diagrams and context diagrams.
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12. System 1 Manifestations during Business
Requirements Elicitation activities
• The brain is very efficient at dealing with individual
particular cases but it is not good at dealing with
ensembles or percentages:
– Use cases take advantage of the brain natural ability to
associate characteristics or properties to agent-like objects
– Use Cases define actions that specific actors carry out.
– Kahneman deliberate personification of System 1 and
System 2 in his presentation is a great illustration of the
communicative power of Actors and Use Cases specially
when dealing with complex ideas.
– Business Analysts can surely benefit from applying Use
Cases to most Requirements Gathering activities
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13. References
• The Marvels and the Flaws of Intuitive Thinking, Edge Master Class 2011:
http://edge.org/conversation/the-marvels-and-flaws-of-intuitive-thinking
• Achieving consensus in business requirements elicitation meetings:
http://slidesha.re/qLD1Yt
Questions and Comments contact: didier@pragmaticohesion.com
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