  One source of software project challenges and failures is the systematic
errors introduced by human cognitive biases. Although extensively explored in
cognitive psychology, investigations concerning cognitive biases have only
recently gained popularity in software engineering (SE) research. This paper
therefore systematically maps, aggregates and synthesizes the literature on
cognitive biases in software engineering to generate a comprehensive body of
knowledge, understand state of the art research and provide guidelines for
future research and practise. Focusing on bias antecedents, effects and
mitigation techniques, we identified 65 articles, which investigate 37
cognitive biases, published between 1990 and 2016. Despite strong and
increasing interest, the results reveal a scarcity of research on mitigation
techniques and poor theoretical foundations in understanding and interpreting
cognitive biases. Although bias-related research has generated many new
insights in the software engineering community, specific bias mitigation
techniques are still needed for software professionals to overcome the
deleterious effects of cognitive biases on their work.
