The Third Mistake

Cognitive biases

Another key error in product management is to become carried away by cognitive biases in decision making.

About 150 cognitive biases exist, which can cause us to make irrational decisions due to automatisms in our brain.

The only way to prevent these biases from affecting the product development process is to iterate, implement short feedback loops in contact with customers, and use data to inform our decisions.

Most cognitive biases hurt the way companies define their strategy. It also negatively impacts the way companies think of new ideas and implements them. But the most important cognitive biases are:

• Innovator bias

• The confirmation bias

• The sunk costs fallacy

These can be easily avoided by adopting the right processes.