Countermeasures and methods

The methods that neutralise biases: pre-mortem, outside view, devil's advocate.

Knowing that a bias exists almost never suffices: we protect ourselves by changing the decision procedure, not by counting on vigilance. This section presents three proven methods: the pre-mortem (imagine the failure before starting), reference-class estimation (look at how similar projects went) and the devil's advocate (organise contradiction).

Each page explains the method step by step, a real case, its limits and how to use AI to help, and points to the biases it fights.

The pre-mortemBefore launching a project, we imagine it has failed and explain why. Origin (Gary Klein, 2007), mechanism, one-hour procedure, examples, limits and AI help.Reference class forecastingTo forecast a project's duration, cost, or outcome, first look at what happened in comparable projects (the “outside view”), then adjust.The devil's advocateAssigning someone to challenge a decision before making it. Ecclesiastical origin, what research says (Schwenk 1990, Nemeth 2001), differences from the red team and independent counter-expertise, how-to and limits.