Decision Making in the Code Translator ISP

Neeraj Gogate

Allen STEAM Center

Computer Science III

David Ben-Yaakov

December 9, 2022

Introduction

Biases are prevalent in almost all areas of life, from office life to online. Most forms of biases are negative, as they often result in unfairly treating someone for an arbitrary reason. Because of this, it is important to remove bias where possible, as it makes interactions with people overall more positive. Such an idea is relevant in the Code Translator ISP project, where working with a group of six people is necessary.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger effect is when a lack of knowledge in a subject matter causes someone to overestimate their skills (Decision Lab, n.d.). This could occur in the project by underestimating the complexity of the data structures and types in Swift and C++ and scheduling them to have much less time to be completed than they need. Delays caused by this could severely halt the development of the project and negatively impact the quality and use case of the final product. The best way to solve this issue is to create systems and structures that will be used even before writing any lines of code. By planning out classes or general structures for code, the complexity of the problem at hand can be better evaluated and make the coding process easier and frictionless.

Pessimism Bias

In contrast, pessimism bias is underestimating the likely hood of positive outcomes. While being pessimistic can be beneficial in preparing oneself for negative outcomes, it can be overall detrimental to productivity (Decision Lab, n.d.). Pessimism is often most common near the end of the project as if the project is off schedule, it feels more and more likely that it will not be completed. As such groups often lower their standards of quality or quantity of work to make the project achievable. This, however, can be detrimental because of Parkinson’s Law, or the idea that work expands to fill the time that is allotted for it (Boogard, 2022). As the amount of work needed for a project decreases, the amount of time it takes to complete that work increases, so decreasing the workload will just make something that can be done well quickly take more time, and prevent more work to be done than necessary. As such, to prevent the problems that arise with pessimism bias and Parkinson’s Law, a hard end date will be set for the project two weeks before the project is officially due. This will make it so that the project will be completed in the allotted time, and it will have enough time so that if any bugs arise or become clear in the two-week interim, they can be resolved thoroughly and easily.

Status Quo Bias

Status quo bias is the idea of maintaining the current conditions of a system or situation and trying to prevent ideas that would alter these conditions (Behavioral Economics, n.d.). In the ISP, this could happen by not adapting and improving old code to make it more efficient out of fear that it will break it. While this may not happen as much at the start of the project, as breaking code is not as severe, as the project progresses and becomes more complex, refining code will become more of a risk, as it could potentially cause more bugs and require changing entire large structures. To lower this risk, different branches can be made in the GitHub repository. This way, large structural changes can be made without erasing past progress, and multiple people could work on implementing those changes rather than one person working on them in a local repository.

Attribution Bias

Attribution bias occurs when a person attempts to make assumptions (often negative) about someone’s personality based on observations they have made that may not be true and are affected by external factors. This can arise in the ISP through any issues with specific team members such as lateness to team meetings, inconsistencies in finishing tasks in an adequate time frame, and lack of communication. These problems are often caused by external circumstances rather than a simple lack of motivation or effort (Industry, 2022). As such, to prevent attribution bias, clear, professional, yet friendly communication is necessary. Doing so will create a more open environment where people are more able to share their thoughts and any problems they may have, making assumptions be made less often.

Favoritism

Favoritism revolves around providing certain benefits to one person that are not offered to others based on some irrelevant external factor. In the scope of the group, favoritism will most likely occur because of the purely online connection between the two sides of the group. Since two of the members are in an entirely different computer science class and have no classes in common with or method of communication with the other group members, connections with those members are not going to be as strong as the connection within the two sides of the groups. Additionally, both sides of the group have some sort of history within them, making the connections even stronger. Because of this favoritism is likely to arise, as there is an inherent lack of personal connection that can happen behind a screen, making favoring one person easier than another. To combat this, decisions can require a supermajority of five out of six of the members to make truly major decisions, with some sort of external input on more minor non-unanimous decisions. This will make the decision-making process fairer, and prevent any major rifts in the group, as a majority of people on each side of the group will have to agree with the decisions made (Sarma, 2022).

Conclusion

Overall, biases are problematic and can cause unfair discrimination, however, they can be easily resolved.

References

Behavioral Economics. (n.d.). Status quo bias. Behavioral Economics. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclopedia-of-be/status-quo-bias/

Boogard, K. (2022, February 12). What is Parkinson’s Law and why is it sabotaging your productivity? Atlassian. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/what-is-parkinsons-law#:~:text=Parkinson's%20Law%20is%20the%20old,%E2%80%9CThe%20Economist%E2%80%9D%20in%201955.

Decision Lab. (n.d.). Dunning–kruger effect. The Decision Lab. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/dunning-kruger-effect

Decision Lab. (n.d.). Pessimism bias. Decision Lab. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/pessimism-bias

Industry, T. (2022, October 19). What is attribution bias? understand and overcome for better decision-making. Training Industry India. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from https://trainingindustry.in/attribution-bias/

Sarma, S. (2022, August 11). How to avoid favoritism in the workplace while rewarding employees. Vantage Circle HR Blog. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from https://blog.vantagecircle.com/favoritism-in-the-workplace/