1. Cognitive Biases in Testing Srikanth S Krishnan Sr. Director QA Oracle India Srikanth S Krishnan Sr. Director QA Oracle India

2. What is a Cognitive Bias ?

3. It is the human tendency to make systematic errors in certain circumstances based on cognitive factors rather than evidence.

4. Heuristics Statistical mis-estimates Memory errors Social Constructs

5. Tester’s Delusion Spots Test Planning Test Design Test Advocacy

6. Anchoring

7. Guess the percentage of African Nations in the UN.

8. Anchoring Will you be happier if you get a 100% raise?

9. Bidding after stating the last 2 digits of social security number

10. Why are black pearls more expensive?

11. occurs when people consider a particular value for an unknown quantity before estimating that quantity

12. Effect on Estimation New Feature vs. regression testing of existing features

13. Effect on Negotiation

14. Relativity

15. Would you mind walking 5 min to save $10 on a $ 50 pen?

16. Would you mind walking 5 min to save $10 on a $ 1000 suit?

17. Decoy Effect or Asymmetric dominance effect

19. Option AOption B Coverage 400300 Cost 38002000

20. Option AOption BOption C Coverage 400300350 Cost 380020004500

21. People not only compare things, but also compare things that are easily comparable.

22. The Price of Ownership Endowment Effect

23. How much would you pay for a Coffee Mug ?

24. Applies to ideas as well as objects.

25. The more effort you put into something the more ownership you feel. IKEA Effect

26. Ex. Manager from Finance

27. Test repository clean up Which one will you get rid of? (assume similar coverage) Suite1 Created with 100 man days effort Suite2 Created with 30 man days effort

28. Effect of Expectation Confirmation bias: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

29. How do you get more women in the orchestra?

30. Positive vs. negative Test cases.

31. Seeing patterns where none exist.

33. e xi st. 20 12 4 31

35. Influence of great UI.

36. Negativity Bias More attention is given to negative than positive experiences

37. The lingering effect of a nasty bug.

38. Sunk Costs

39. Concorde Fallacy “I have spent so much time doing the setups.”

40. Concorde Fallacy Why test a build that has been obsoleted?

41. Paradox of Choice

42. Concorde Fallacy More is not always better

43. Burn your bridges

44. Concorde Fallacy Why don’t we keep this server just in case?

45. Procrastination

46. Concorde Fallacy Choose your own deadline

47. Concorde Fallacy The hockey-stick effort curve

48. Concorde Fallacy Milestones and distributed deadlines

49. Resurrection to Rationality

50. overcoming channeling

51. References and Acknowledgements Predictably Irrational – Dan Ariely Nudge – Thaler & Sunstein Blink – Malcolm Gladwell Sway – Brafman (Ori & Rom) Wikipedia Predictably Irrational – Dan Ariely Nudge – Thaler & Sunstein Blink – Malcolm Gladwell Sway – Brafman (Ori & Rom) Wikipedia

52. Concorde Fallacy Thank You Twitter: sriks7 sriks7@gmail.com