Agile frameworks, tools and policies aim to influence choices of the teams in a way that they will be better off as judged by themselves. But it is important to factor the influence of hierarchy in to variance to minimize the human error.

Minimize Muda - How do we miss guerilla?

Pay attention – Why and how we miss guerilla?

When engaged in a demanding task, attention can act like a set of blinders, making it possible for salient stimuli to pass unnoticed right in front of our eyes ^1,3, this phenomenon of sustained inattentional blindness(IB)^2,3 is evident in our lives

 

Sensory organs , Pre Frontal  cortex (PFC), Basal Ganglia(BG), Thalamus,  thin layer of neuron inhibitors called Thalamic Reticular Nucleus (TRN) around thalamus work together during the demanding task.

The prefrontal cortex controls a filter on incoming sensory information in the thalamus^4,5  but when overwhelmed with information from sensory organs, PFC instruct BG to deploy TRN inhibitors to suppress the flow of sensory organ information overload to let allow required information^4,6. The guerilla being part of the information overload, will go in to the blind spot and that is how we miss guerilla.

 

 

Pay attention – How can we get guerilla in agile?

Sustained inattentional blindness in agile squad /pod /teams can be minimized when each individual views and thoughts are independent of social influence and halo effects.

The formal process of aggregating diverse views (Delphi) may challenging but estimate-talk-estimate (mini delphi)⁷ may help in agile environment.

     

 

 

1.      (Neisser & Becklen, 1975)¹

2.      Simons and Chabris’ (1999) study

3.      “The invisible gorilla strikes again: Sustained inattentional blindness in expert observers” (nih.gov)

4.      To Pay Attention, the Brain Uses Filters, Not a Spotlight | Quanta Magazine

5.      Francis Crick (1984)

6.      Michael Halassa (2015) MIT

Selection and aggregation in forecasting (chapter 21)page 262, Noise A flow in Human Judgement, Kahneman, Sunstein, sibony