Discussion on:

Combating biases in IT consulting

... at someone else than it is to see these biases in yourself. We all suffer from a self-justification bias as well.

quite easily.
Exposure effect is hard one, as it's quite probable I've been consulted because I've been exposed. Will admit to applying erm familiar tried and tested solutions firs, but I'm not one of those people who hangs on to a bad idea, to avoid looking like I had one...

What bias is the inverse of hyperbolic discounting, now that I do suffer from...

Normalcy bias, well no, I get called in when the wheels have come off, so that is the normal situation...

... would, I guess, be putting too much emphasis on long-term benefit at the expense of short-term gains. I lean that way too, but I think it's in reaction to having my grand plans cut off at the knees in order to get something released.

is usually noticeable as a growing feeling of discomfort when there doesn't seem to be a problem... that is - when the eventual problem has, as of yet, succeeded in hiding it's presence.

That's like your kids getting suddenly quiet.

However as clients we also have to watch for the biases of the consultants that we hire. Often the consultant proposes things be done a certain because that is the way they have always done them, also sometimes the consultant really is being a "chicken little" and warning about issues that are very unlikely.

maj

Because everyone seems to want to go with the solution that uses the latest catch-word and extravigent claim, but I have had to deal with a lot of hyperbolic discounting too.

I would say that Exposure Effect is my biggest obstacle, but I am also one of those people that wants to try everything.
Still, while I have used a multitude of OSes*, when I am working with business clients I am going to recommend Windows because I know that they are familiar with it, and that there is a larger installed base of business apps.
If and until that changes, it is "Go with what THEY know" for me.

*OSes I have used (and showing my age):
CP/M on a Tandy Model 4P.
Unix (original Berkley on a PDP11/70, SCO, Solaris, and AIX).
MS-DOS, Windows 3.11, 95, NT, 2000 (Desktop and Server), 2003, 2008, XP, Vista, and 7.
Mac (before X)
Linux (RH and Ubuntu distros, but back in 06 to 08, haven't had time to play recently)

... including the age-revealing CP/M, and Unix on PDP's.

Have you ever looked at FreeBSD?

CP/M and PDP11 on mine as well.
Also HP's MPE/XL, HP-UX, and my favourite VMS.

I wouldn't say I've gone out of my way to try everything, more like everything has been tried on me...

One time I told a bank that they had a bug that would allow a person to do currency exchanges in which the "person" could bilk them out of thousands of dollars because of the bug. Their response, "Oh, that won't happen." It did and due to similar decisions they are no longer in business.

Another company had a product that allowed only so many admin passwords to be created (another financial product) and didn't allow old ones to be removed. I told software company, their response, "So,what?" and they are being sued by a business who bought their software because an old employee had figured out this bug and stole millions.

Ha, Ha your loss, I love it when people don't pay attention, I use it as a stick to get more clients i.e. well you know what happened to X, well let me tell you the story. You wouldn't want that to happen here, would you?

Is against special theories when the general is what you're up to.

... or would that be too specialized for your taste?

At first I was troubled by the headline. The plural makes for clumsy reading. Probably got re-written by your editor, I thought, and let it go.

Nope. Confirmed by your own writing, unless that was re-written, too.

Nope. You did special cases, as though "bias" hadn't been invented yet and you were inductively establishing its existence, all the while using the plural of what didn't exist.

On the whole, a litany of the special, with promise of more to come.

I don't think we can solve the problem of bias by attacking the general tendency. We need to identify specific ways in which it creeps in, or else we can be completely unaware of it.

One thing is the cover term, bias. A shroud like what you speak of.
Another thing is the incarnations, the instances - specific ways, like you also speak of.
The last thing is what it is, not a cover, but a foundation.
Not how it creeps in, but where it's going, what we do for it, what it does for us.
We're a mercenary kind, we humans, we do things for specific gain, at the core.
Not that it means selfishness, in the normal sense, the currency of the id is not what we expect.

If we know what it covers for us, then we know also when to decline. It is, after all, trying to help us.

The various forms of bias evolved in us because they promote survival in some way, so they're not automatically "bad." The problem is when they lead us into sub-optimal choices by keeping us from considering some of the important alternatives.

I never forget and greatly respect the power that I have over my clients' systems, servers and workstations. Let's face it - we have enormous control over THEIR business venture and can easily wreck them with, to use an extreme example, bad typing on the keyboard. (Well, how many of us badly type an admin password without really checking where the fingers are going and the sheer hell that follows along!) My own Bias is in favor of THEIR state of mind, their networks, their environment. Has to be. I am therefore very conservative on any NEW ideas that are dramatic. Many consultants love Ubuntu and Linux. They are great, but would they work in my client site? Can I trust patient management programs to run correctly in medical offices on Linux? And the amount of conversion time alone would be considerable, so would the client PAY gladly for something that nets them ONLY something new and nothing else changes? Plus staff training. Oh, the mind boggles!!!

On MY network, I am all for open exploration. I would always prefer to destroy my server first than a client server.

But clients deserve great care.

I know I'm guilty. We (an IT consulting company) continue to recommend a backup solution that we have now decided is just too finnicky; we spend far more time keeping it working than we should, meanwhile our smaller clients running ntbackup/Windows Backup generally have no issues. We still recommend it because we have invested a lot of time in learning its nuances. We know its limitations and how to work around them now. Oh, and it does have much more powerful features, particularly on restore, than ntbackup has. So its a combination of features plus our own inertia/comfort zone.

We have picked up clients from other IT consultants with far less excusable biases though. The most memorable was a guy that recommended a client (a real estate company) move to Linux on the desktop and move to an open source mail program (can't recall its name). This was recommended to a client that already had Windows servers, with Exchange, all CALs and Windows and Outlook on the desktops; again already licensed. Their justification boiled down to him not liking Microsoft's business practices (the client didn't care; they can't run their line-of-business apps on Linux!) and the cost savings. I repeat; the client was already fully licensed (and was very static in terms of number of employees). Never-the-less, he wrote a four-page proposal outlining why open source was superior and that they should immediately throw away all their existing licenses because "it's so expensive to buy them"!

The client openly admits they are clueless when it comes to IT, but even they saw through this douche straight away. Keep your personal biases at home people!