In this BA Community webinar, we were joined by Liz Calder of Blue Raccoon, who discussed why it is useful for business analysts to understand cognitive biases. Liz’s session was entitled:
Are you thinking what you think you’re thinking?
The webinar was recorded and can be viewed below.
If you’d like to hear about future webinars, and receive a handy newsletter every 4-6 weeks, you can
Join our BA Digest mailing list.
Webinar Description
So, you’re a Business Analyst. You know how to elicit requirements and analyse them. You are objective about your stakeholders’ needs, understand the project scope, can determine the cost benefit and still things don’t turn out as expected. It could be down to Cognitive Bias.
- Why aren’t people coming up with new ideas in your workshops? It’s the anchoring bias, compounded by bandwagon bias.
- Are your problem solving sessions reaching the right solutions? If not, maybe it’s the curse of knowledge or loss aversion bias.
- Why is estimating seen as a black art? Blame the planning fallacy and optimism bias.
This session will examine these questions and others by drawing on the fields of psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics and applying them to Business Analysis. We’ll also look at ways to overcome biases and help counter the natural tendencies of our brains.
- What Cognitive Biases are
- How they affect both you, as a Business Analyst, and your stakeholders
- Approaches for overcoming biases, or even using them to your advantage
About the Speaker
Dr Liz Calder’s experience ranges from leading cross functional and global teams in large organisations to being part of a small digital agency team, with clients from the science, life-science and education sectors. Whatever the environment she knows that what makes a project a success is the combination of good project practice and getting the best from the people in your project. She is passionate about making sure that all stakeholders get the most out of a new system or website and uses insights from the fields of psychology & behavioural economics to push for the best outcomes for all involved. Liz is Director of Blue Raccoon Ltd, a Business Analysis consultancy, and blogs at her site blueraccoon.co.uk/articles.