How Fast and Slow Thinking Helps in Agile

 Being agile means exploring various options and changing behavior for betterment. Agile starts from a change of mindset. The traditional mindset that, obtaining success always requires speeding up the process of working as well as thinking, is not what agile considers. Agile accepts the new concepts and processes that can help for growth then it may be for change in processes or thinking. One such concept that agile appreciate is of thinking fast and slow.

Agile understands the requirement of going slow sometimes so that the idea of the direction we are heading, defining our priorities, and bringing positive noticeable change can be achieved.

Understanding fast and slow thinking helps us find more rational solutions to issues we are facing. As a human, we think that we are more rational with our thinking but our human thinking is more biased, oversimplified, and distorted. With fast and slow thinking we can identify our thinking and rectify or fine-tune thinking so that we can make better decisions and face situations more clearly.

Whether agile or not human thinking has two systems which are explained below.

System1: It is more based on emotions. It acts speedily and subconsciously. It has no sense of voluntary control and takes little or no effort to act. Examples of system 1 thinking involve, calculating 2+2=4, one stick is longer than another, and one person is standing away from the other. This system 1 helps in keeping you away from harm as it warns us about danger and acts on it in a matter of seconds. A large part of system 1 is based on emotions.

System 2: It is based mostly on thinking logically while taking time to act. It is more reflective and comparatively less panic driven. Examples of system 2 thinking involve, calculating tougher solutions like 245x 524= 128380, how far the person is and what’s the length of the stick. System 2 thinking operates slowly, reasoning and taking time for calculating. This involves our conscious and deliberate mind thinking.

In agile we observe that most of the time teams speed up the process racing towards the goal post without scoring any goals often just to complete the event in the provided timeframe. These results into;

·       Working on symptoms rather than on root cause

·       Same items are repeated as no one is ready to own the responsibility of them as everyone is busy with delivery

·       Not enough time is taken to analyze and understand the situation

·       Learning is not done from the mistakes making to repeat the mistakes regularly

Considering agile, let’s see some examples of activities in agile that should be done fast and slowly. With this example, it will be easy to understand where faster thinking and slower thinking should be applied in agile.

Assuming what users will be thinking or acting on is the worst method to lead the whole product design. There are various and quicker ways to go with product design testing and design solution. It is good to have design product development with prior feedback and testing from the users on what they want. It’s advised to keep testing quickly whether at the start of the product development or after it. Try to get early feedback from users to better the product and avoid putting your assumptions about it by thinking yourselves. There are 1-2 hour tests and also 5 minutes of tests to carry out the task.

Documentation is required for further references and time saving but putting an extra lot of time is documentation will only delay the product development. Having neatly organized documentation is good but this can also be done by sticking notes for essential points without wasting any time thinking.

Developing an Information Architect (IA) of a product is a task that should be done with slow thinking. As structural change may create a mess, developing product IA from start will be more demanding and time is required to have a market study, and understand users.

The blueprint of the product requires a slow thinking process as the development of a product is dependent on the blueprint. It should involve a collective process, adapted from product needs and user requirements findings.

Events in agile are also an important part of agile working, proceeding with timeboxing the events is required but that doesn’t mean going with faster thinking, it will be good to prioritize the top 2-3 items or even one item with slow thinking to obtain quality and reliable results from the event.

In short, we see that slow thinking processes must involve norms, memorable examples, coherence, emotions, habits, and cognitive heuristics. Whereas, fast thinking must involve, suspended judgment, logical thinking, de-biased, getting more data, formal models, soliciting reviews, and considering alternatives. These both are required to be applied for obtaining the best results.

About Advance Agility

We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.

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