Curiosity Theory and the Principle of Optimum Knowledge

When I talk about curiosity I usually talk about experimentation and the need for failure. When teaching experimentation with games such as Eleusis Expeditious, I inevitably end up talking about the Information Theory curve. I learned about Information Theory from Don Reinertsen in his book Principles of Product Development Flow – specifically Principle V4:

“The Principle of Optimum Failure Rate. Fifty percent failure rate is usually optimum for generating information.”

Information Theory

I recently had an insight about a different way to think about curiosity which can be represented by a similar graph. With a change in the axis we can call this Curiosity Theory.

Curiosity Theory

What Curiosity Theory says is that if we know absolutely everything (on the right hand side of the x-axis), then we will have no curiosity. Why would we when our knowledge is so complete? Equally, if we know absolutely nothing (on the left hand side of the x-axis), then we will also have no curiosity. We wouldn’t even know what there might be to be curious about. The sweet spot in the middle is where we do have some knowledge, but recognise that we don’t know everything. Thus we could reframe Don’s principle to be:

“The Principle of Optimum Knowledge. Fifty percent knowledge is usually optimum for generating curiosity.”

This came from listening to a podcast which talked about curiosity, and which suggested that to encourage curiosity, we need to help people realise that they might not have all the knowledge. Rather than trying to tell people what they don’t know, we could encourage people to explain in detail what they do know. In this way they might realise that they don’t know as much as they thought they did.

While I would warn that we need to be careful that we aren’t trying to trick people or embarrass people, I do like how this ties in with Argyris’s idea of Assertive Inquiry; asserting what we do know, and also inquiring about what we don’t know.

It also means that to encourage people to be more curious, we have to practice curiosity ourselves. Its always possible that we don’t know as much as we thought we did!

Lean & Kanban Conferences – Looking back and looking forwards

Its a month now since the Lean & Kanban Conference in Miami and I haven’t had chance to blog about it. There’s probably not much I can add that hasn’t been said elsewhere already. It was an incredible week; stimulating, inspiring, focussed, energising. I learned a lot, and made and met old and new friends. For those who couldn’t make it, the presentations are available for download, and the proceedings book is available to buy. All profits from the proceedings will go towards the formation of the Lean Software and Systems Consortium.

Plans for the equivalent event in London are taking shape nicely. Registration is now open and we have had 40 registrations in the first week so it looks like demand will be high – book early to avoid disappointment! We have a fantastic line-up of speakers confirmed, and the program has now been published. The vision was to create an event which generates discussion and debate with a format that is hopefully a little different from the norm. The mix of presenter talks with interviews is intended to stir up some debate, and the Masterclasses are an opportunity to discuss ideas more interactively with the speakers and fellow attendees – more of a roundtable than a teaching session.

Zurich Lean Agile Scrum Slides

I have posted my slides for the talk I did at the Zurich Lean Agile Scrum event on my downloads page. Inspired by the quality of some of the “Zen” presentations at the Lean & Kanban Conference in Miami, I created a new deck, and included some more slides on some Lean history. I have added some notes to the slides so I hope they have some use for those that weren’t in the room!

The conference closed with a speakers panel, including Ken Schwaber, when the question of “Is Kanban an alternative to Scrum” was asked! Fortunately Ken and I are still friends after the discussion, and the general consensus was that regardless of what we do and what we call it, the primary focus should be on doing the right thing.

Announcing Lean & Kanban 2009 Miami

The Lean & Kanban 2009 conference in Miami (KSE : Miami) is officially open for registration at http://leankanbanconference.com/. Its February 18th-20th at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

From the Flyer:

Two and half days featuring a full day of presentations with separate tracks for Lean and Kanban, plus a full day of open space and a half day of lightning talks. You will learn the latest thinking in applying Lean techniques like kanban to shorten cycle time and deliver more value from your software projects. Mix with the experts and practitioners using these ideas every day in organizations around the world.

Come and enjoy the beautiful South Beach venue. Enjoy the Florida sun in winter. Mix with your peers, extend your network and enjoy deep discussions during frequent breaks, open space and at our cocktail  reception Feb 18th sponsored by Ultimate Software. Be part of our community. Be part of the next wave of software management and leadership.

Keynotes:

  • Donald G. Reinertsen
  • Alan Shalloway
  • David J. Anderson

Other speakers include:

  • Myself
  • Amit Rathore
  • Dean Leffingwell
  • Corey Ladas
  • Peter Middleton
  • James Sutton
  • David Laribee
  • Others

I’ll be opening the kanban track with a version of Kanban, Flow and Cadence to introduce the basic concepts and set-up Corey to talk about Scrumban – Scrum & Kanban,  I’m really looking forward to it – it should be the start of a regular conference which has the potential to grow into something big.  Hope to see you there!