An Experimental Evaluation of a De-biasing Intervention for Professional Software Developers
This addresses judgment biases in software engineering planning, offering a practical intervention for professionals, though it is incremental as it builds on known psychological effects.
The study tackled the problem of anchoring bias in software project estimates by testing a de-biasing workshop for professional developers, resulting in a reduction of the bias effect from Cohen's d=1.19 to 0.72 and a threefold decrease in estimate variance.
CONTEXT: The role of expert judgement is essential in our quest to improve software project planning and execution. However, its accuracy is dependent on many factors, not least the avoidance of judgement biases, such as the anchoring bias, arising from being influenced by initial information, even when it's misleading or irrelevant. This strong effect is widely documented. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to replicate this anchoring bias using professionals and, novel in a software engineering context, explore de-biasing interventions through increasing knowledge and awareness of judgement biases. METHOD: We ran two series of experiments in company settings with a total of 410 software developers. Some developers took part in a workshop to heighten their awareness of a range of cognitive biases, including anchoring. Later, the anchoring bias was induced by presenting low or high productivity values, followed by the participants' estimates of their own project productivity. Our hypothesis was that the workshop would lead to reduced bias, i.e., work as a de-biasing intervention. RESULTS: The anchors had a large effect (robust Cohen's $d=1.19$) in influencing estimates. This was substantially reduced in those participants who attended the workshop (robust Cohen's $d=0.72$). The reduced bias related mainly to the high anchor. The de-biasing intervention also led to a threefold reduction in estimate variance. CONCLUSIONS: The impact of anchors upon judgement was substantial. Learning about judgement biases does appear capable of mitigating, although not removing, the anchoring bias. The positive effect of de-biasing through learning about biases suggests that it has value.