Protocol
Red-team the plan from the other side of the system
Your plan is not the only plan in the room.
When it fits
- A plan depends on how a customer, competitor, operator, attacker, regulator or neighboring team will respond.
When to avoid it
- Perspective-taking is still inference. Verify with direct evidence when the other actor's actual behavior is observable.
Why it matters
Adopt the perspective, incentives, information and constraints of the external actor or subsystem. Ask how they could react, adapt or exploit the plan. Return to your own perspective only after producing a coherent alternative model of their behavior.
Steps
- The red-team view uses the other side's incentives and constraints rather than simply imagining your own team behaving badly.
An example
A new approval rule may reduce one team's errors but encourage users to bypass the process through manual exceptions.
Check your result
The red-team view uses the other side's incentives and constraints rather than simply imagining your own team behaving badly.
Keep this limit in mind
- Perspective-taking is still inference. Verify with direct evidence when the other actor's actual behavior is observable.
Connected ideas
Useful withGive the favored judgment a real devil's advocate
Evidence and sources
Devil's Advocacy and Red Team Analysis are contrarian techniques intended to challenge a dominant view or examine a problem from a different perspective.
Adversarial challenge can become theater if the challenger lacks independence, information or a genuine alternative model.
A Tradecraft Primer: Structured Analytic Techniques for Improving Intelligence Analysis · Contrarian Techniques; Imaginative Thinking Techniques