Comments on: Business Analysts and the Abilene Paradox

By: doug goldberg

doug goldberg — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:37:23 +0000

RT @jonbab1 From the archive: Business Analysts and the Abilene Paradox http://bit.ly/tqFIS #baot <—–great! worth trip back in time

By: Jonathan Babcock

Jonathan Babcock — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:23:03 +0000

From the archive: Business Analysts and the Abilene Paradox http://bit.ly/tqFIS #baot

By: Bamba

Bamba — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:19:23 +0000

This is a very important phenomenon that all business analyst must be aware.

By: JB

JB — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:17:01 +0000

Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for the comments, gentlemen.

The paradox is definitely an interesting – and real – phenomenon. Just having learned the little I have about it, and the dangers of groupthink have helped me adjust my comportment and the way I manage meetings.

Scott, I appreciated (as always) the insights in your related post.

Carl, I’ll definitely check out your site as well.

By: Carl Kessler

Carl Kessler — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:40:12 +0000

This is a great way to describe a real problem. The thing is, while it feels as though this should be easy to solve by just asking the right questions, in practice it isn’t so simple.

In the outside-in approach to software development, John Sweitzer and I describe techniques that specifically address the Abilene Paradox (although we don’t use that colorful name for it!).

We start with understanding WHO your projectâ€™s stakeholders really are. That tells you whose requirements to even consider. Then we suggest ways to prioritize them, using a tool we call the Stakeholder Goals Map.

This approach also allows us to deal with changes over the course of a project: changing requirements (yes that happens!) and changing constraints (like budgets). Read more at http://outside-in-thinking.com/?p=50

By: How to use outside-in development to deal with the Abilene Paradox | outside-in-thinking

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:31:42 +0000

[...] a recent post, Scott Sehlorst at TynerBlain discussed the Abilene Paradox (see Jonathan Babcockâ€™s post on this as [...]

By: Scott Sehlhorst

Scott Sehlhorst — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 05:19:07 +0000

Great article – just ran into an example of this exact phenomenon when reviewing a use case today. Wrote about it in my linked article (above).

Thanks – I would have been much more expressive (and persuasive) in my feedback today, had I already read the Abilene story.

By: Tyner Blain

Tyner Blain — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 05:16:50 +0000

Avoid the Abilene Paradox…

An excellent article by Jonathan Babcock raises a thought provoking idea. When gathering requirements, we can end up with requirements that no one actually wants, because everyone thought someone else wanted it. This is apparently known as the Abile…

By: Bill Miller

Bill Miller — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:33:26 +0000

Thanks for this article. You make great points. I never heard of this paradox before, but it explains many things. Often unrealistic schedules are a consequence of this paradox, but often times they are right to withold objections.

There are often consequences to pointing out to the emperors that they have no clothes. Too often project deliveries are set based on desires and optimism supported by the software community’s lack of support for estimates based on metrics.

If we had some facts supported by numbers for software estimates, there would be less ability to ignore the obvious, and thus permit optimism and desires to rule decisions. I discuss this some in my essay titled, Reflection: Unrealistic Schedules.

I would like to contact you via email, but I was unable to find an email address for you on this site. Can you send me an email, so I can correspond with you?