3 arguments against BLOCKED and a bonus on IMPEDIMENT

Why I don’t like "blocked" –

In some companies, people don’t want to say they are blocked.

(1) Being blocked gives you a sense of blaming others. Not wanting to offend coworkers...

Yes, I'm waiting on Joe, but he's not blocking me!

But we want honesty and need safety. I need a safe environment so that Joe and I can agree that Joe's blocking me. It's not Joe's fault. It just is. And it needs to be a safe environment especially if it is Joe's fault.

(2) Being blocked gives you lots of scrutiny.

No! I’m not blocked! Don’t help me!

But that’s exactly what we want – attention on the problem, but in a servant leadership collaborative way. Too often, blockers attract the wrong kind of attention.

(3) Being blocked sounds so absolute.

...and I'm not totally blocked anyway. There's some other stuff I can do.

Yeah, less important stuff. Probably stuff we shouldn't be doing anyway, unless it's taking advantage of slack to sharpen your saw.

(4) Having an impediment sounds like a medical problem.

No, unh-uh, no impediments here.

Impediment is such a funny word. Who introduced that into the agile vernacular anyway? Nobody uses that in normal speech. People new to agile likely don't even know what that means.


That's why I like to ask "what's slowing you down?"

"Oh, yeah, my PC's a few years old. I don't have very good test data. The A/C shuts off at 5:30p each day. I have to make two hops to remote into the test-lab because of security reasons. The build server builds once per day instead of on check-in. The unit tests are taking a few minutes to run; I think someone put something bad in there. We should find it and move the offender over to the regression suite or make it faster. Why can't we get some stickier stickies? I'm waiting for Joe to give me access to the production server. And I keep getting interrupted by customers bypassing the support desk… Sure. Lots of stuff is slowing me down."

Ah. Great. Now that I know, we can go work on that.

Constellations and Deep Democracy

Constellations can be used as effectively with just one or two statements as well as with dozen, making it an effective tool for Deep Democracy.

One of the tools I picked up from Lyssa Adkins' book, Coaching Agile Teams, is called Constellation. (It really should be plural, Lyssa.) Briefly, the purpose of Constellations is to gain a better understanding of your team and their individual preferences, values, interests, or opinions.

Mechanically Constellations works like this: Put something in the middle of a big open room. Have everyone stand in a big circle around this object. Explain that you are going to read some statements. (Such as: "I like Scrum." "I get value out of our retros." "We should TDD more." "I think Agile will work for us." Etc.) Instruct the team to orient themselves closer or further away from this object after each statement is read to represent the extent to which they agree with that statement. If they agree, move in. If not, move out. Tell them to not over think it. Tell them to stand where their heart and head tells them to stand, not where they think they should stand. Then have the team observe the Constellation of people and discuss what it means. There are some considerations for how that discussion is facilitated, but that's a topic for another post.

The way it's described in the book is that the facilitator might want to read numerous statements. This is a great way for a team to get to know each other. I've done this exercise with about a dozen different teams. Now, I'm no longer surprised by what I find. A common surprise to the team is when they discover that their Product Owner doesn't like to run the demo but that someone else one the team has been dying to do it. Another: There's often an ah-ha moment when the team begins to understand that the quiet person just needs time to think before he speaks.

Anyway, I've done this lots and lots and have used 20 to 40 statements each time. Some of the resulting Constellations aren't interesting. I move on quickly and don't have discussion for those. Some are very revealing. I have a short discussion on the spot for those. Even the teams that are well established have interesting revelations using this technique. The number of questions and amount of discussion is bounded only by the team's willingness to continue standing.

Building on Michael Spayd's talk on Deep Democracy at Agile 2009, during the Atlanta Scrum Gathering in 2012, Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd led a Constellations exercise and only asked 2 questions.

They used the technique for Deep Democracy (Arnold Mindell). They were working with a large random group of people from the conference; I usually work with a team that has at least a little work history, and often a long history with each other. They facilitated the discussion carefully, more carefully than I would with a known group. Lyssa started with the inner ring and encouraged all voices to be heard, one ring at a time, an important aspect of Deep Democracy. Lyssa was careful to give voice to each ring in the Constellation and to set the ground rules: don't state that someone else's opinion is wrong or challenge someone else, use "I think" or "I feel" or "my opinion is", all opinions are valid, I will step in if you violate these rules, etc.

What I learned directly from Lyssa that I didn't get out of the book is that the Constellations technique can be useful with just one or two questions. In particular, it's useful when you have a specific narrow topic, even a controversial one -- when Deep Democracy is needed. This can provide a safe environment in which to speak and allows the facilitator to manage diverse opinions in a logical progression. It's also useful to reduce the number of questions as the size of the team grows (since it takes more time to allow more people to voice their opinion).

I would love to hear about your experiences with Constellations and Deep Democracy, together or separately. Are there other variations on this theme? Other ways to use this technique?

For the Sake of a Productive Retrospective

Even good, competent, and valued people sometimes have an off day, make an ill-advised or selfish choice, or are just plain mindless.¹

Like many others, I'm not quite satisfied with the Retrospective Prime Directive as it's written. I understand and appreciate Dinwiddie's explanation of it, but as a useful tool, the directive doesn't strike any chords for me. What I think the directive is trying to say is:

Retrospectives are not about blame. They are about moving forward.

So why not just say that? I'm fond of Tobias' take on it (with another phrase² inserted):

We are emotional and vulnerable beings, subject to a continuous flow of influences from a myriad of sources. Sometimes we perform magnificently, other times we mess up. Mostly we are somewhere between these extremes. In this last period of work everyone did what they did, and likely had reasons for doing so.
     Bearing in mind that there are many factors of which I am unaware.²
Accept what is. And now, what can we learn from our past actions and thinking that will inform and guide our future ones?

Whenever I'm working with a team that is still struggling to create a safe environment, I also suggest "quietly considering" this:

I will ensure that we have a safe environment
in which we can each own up to our own mistakes own our own
and endeavor to not be defensive if someone else points out my mistakes.
If someone gets defensive, we'll assume that the environment is not safe
rather than assume a personality flaw.

1. Stone, Patton, Heen, Fisher, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, Penguin, 2010, page 287.

2. Wallace C. Ellerbroek, MD, “Language, Thought, & Disease”, The CoEvolution Quarterly, No. 17, Spring 1978, page 33.

Management at the Solstice

The winter solstice is upon us here in the Northern Hemisphere. The earth is tilted on its axis, making the days shorter as the earth goes about it's elliptical orbit around the sun, reaching the shortest day on the winter solstice. This doesn't coincide with the dead of winter, however, because of seasonal lag caused by us having lots of water around, giving off stored heat. (A little something to look forward to -- three more months of cold weather.) Speaking of colds, our solstice does, however, occur right after the start of cold and flu season. Lower relative humidity indoors and us being indoors more makes us more susceptible to viruses. The shortening days and more time spent indoors gives us the winter blues. Depression, more prevalence of illness, compounded by the dreaded annual performance review and holiday stress makes a nasty combination. All of this ultimately leads to poor productivity and unhappy people.

So what? What's that to do with me?

The manager's job is to create an environment in which people can be productive, even healthy. Help your team attack the winter blues and defeat viruses. Help them find their happy hat.

But how?

You've got to come up with your own ideas for your own environment, but here are some examples.

Improve lighting for a better mood. We might be saving energy, but we're killing productivity with those glare and headache inducing, flickering fluorescent lights. Indirect non-fluorescent lamps are easier on the eyes. Or set up a light therapy room in some meeting room or office. Why not?

And sunlight is great. Open the blinds and schedule some outdoor activities, maybe a team lunch that you can walk to or at least drive to. In other words, get out of the building during the middle of the day.

Stock the break rooms with fresh fruit, nuts, and disinfectant wipes. Oranges are great to have around, being good for overall health. The smell of a fresh orange around the office makes people smile inside, doesn't it? Apples are easy to wash and eat and some say provide a pick-me-up as good as coffee. But please, get a good eating apple like a Pink Lady. Shoot, do something unique -- buy and peel a pomegranate for each person in your group. Most folks have probably never seen a pomegranate. You'll be expanding their horizons.

As for nuts, we grow tired of peanuts and who likes cashews anyway? Try pecans, the healthy nut with the highest amount of anti-oxidants. Almonds and walnuts work too.

While you are passing out the hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, encourage hand washing.

Do this and you'll create a happy, healthy work environment. Happy people are productive people. For more bright ideas, check out last December's post.

Yet Another Agile Reading List

(Updated October 2018)

I'm often asked for an agile reading list and each time I wish that I had already blogged it. What's kept me from doing it so far is that I tend to write a somewhat new list each time depending on the requester's level of experience, unique situation, and context. Such a list is also likely to change over time, but that shouldn't stop me from posting it -- this post is my thoughts at this point in time. My thoughts are likely to change.

That said, and without further ado or proof reading, here is an agile reading list.

Getting Started
Just go read the Scrum Guide. If you've never read it, you really should. It's short. But you might need something beyond that to gain a better understanding of how and why agile works, so don't stop there...

I could make this easy for me and just say read Cohn's signature series plus the Beck signature series. That'd keep you busy for a while and cover the topic pretty well.

But I can put a little more effort into this. Don't let this long list scare you. Start with this 1st block, then supplement with some of the others. I'm writing this from the point of view of helping a total agile novice get started.

Most importantly, you need to understand the agile values: http://agilemanifesto.org/ and http://pmdoi.org/ and either http://www.extremeprogramming.org/values.html or http://www.softwarereality.com/lifecycle/xp/four_values.jsp or http://xp123.com/xplor/xp0209b/index.shtml.

Here are some links about agile in general and two specific agile processes, XP and Scrum, and one lean/agile approach called Kanban. Just read as little or as much of these as you desire to get the gist of what it's all about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_development
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Programming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29

You need a good understanding of the Scrum process since it's the market share leader right now. I really really like Kenny Rubin's way with words and his Essential Scrum book is excellent. This is good: Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum by Mike Cohn. Subscribe to Mike's blog.

Here's a good short, quick, easy to read intro to Scrum: "The Elements of Scrum" by Sims and Johnson. It includes some extra stuff that you really should do if you are using Scrum. I liked that. Well written.

I think I'll throw in http://scrumpocketguide.com/# from my friend Peter Saddington. I haven't read it, but it sounds short. :-)

Alternatives or Slightly More Advanced Items
Subscribe to my blog and LeadingAgile's blog :-).

These next few are a bit old, but you need to have read something by "Uncle Bob" and Alistair. You could substitute some other book by them if you wish:
Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices by Robert C. Martin.
Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn.

These eXtreme Programming books are great and short and solidly apply to Scrum:
Planning XP by Beck.
XP Installed by Jeffries.
XP Explored by Wake.
Don't get the original white XP Explained book by Beck. It's talks about Load Factors and Ideal Engineering Days which I don't recommend.

If you want to broaden beyond Scrum and XP, read about Crystal Clear and the other Crystal methods by Alistair Cockburn.

Product Owner
Now we move beyond the basics into some specifics. First, let's take a look at the Product Owner related literature:

http://www.agilemodeling.com/artifacts/userStory.htm

Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn.

User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn.

Here are some great posts from my colleague on The Product Owner:
http://www.leadingagile.com/2011/03/why-a-product-owner-team/
http://www.leadingagile.com/2011/03/product-owner-team-who-needs-to-play/
http://www.leadingagile.com/2011/03/one-real-life-product-owner-team/
http://www.leadingagile.com/2011/03/product-owner-team-design-considerations/

Scrum Product Ownership by Robert Galen. It's not an intro to agile. It's a good, thorough book on product ownership. It's full of good advice and tips and warnings against certain dysfunctional behaviors. The book contains some typos and passive voice that will annoy some people.

The Product Owner role in agile is a big job. And very important. Many say it can't be filled by just one person because no one has all the necessary skills. They say you often need a team of people with diverse skills and responsibilities to do the job well. I tend to agree. Here is some food for thought:
http://blog.xebia.com/2008/05/22/scrum-the-mythical-product-owner-role/

Scrum Master
Next, someone on your team needs to understand retrospectives in depth. If you don't get what you need to know out of the above books, this one is wonderful: Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby. Subscribe to Esther's blog.

I highly recommend Scrum Mastery by Geoff Watts. This is an excellent book filled with very practical and though provoking advice.

Lyssa's book, Coaching Agile Teams, is very useful, but the novice should read the others first.

Technical
Here are some more assorted topics:

Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams by Lisa Crispin. And check out her sequel also: More Agile Testing.

Read Beck's TDD book, Fowler's Refactoring book, Evans' Domain Driven Design book, and Williams' Pair Programming book.

Specification By Example by Gojko Adzic should be in this list as should The Cucumber Book by Wynne and Hellesoy.

Lean
At some point, you might need to know what people mean by Lean as it applies to software. Poppendieck wrote the books on it:

Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash by Mary Poppendieck

Leading Lean Software Development: Results Are not the Point by Mary Poppendieck.

To really understand lean, really and truly, read Toyota Kata by Mike Rother. This is about getting everyone in the org to make process improvement part of their daily job, to be very intentional about understanding the current and target condition, and to be very intentional about mentoring everyone about everything I just mentioned. This text will help you have a proper understanding about everything else you read about lean, all the techniques, all the metrics, all the approaches. 

Then read The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, a delightful book. We also have his Theory of Constraints (ToC) text. Goldratt is becoming a very important person to have read, at least for lean/agile consultants.

However, if you read Goldratt, you must also read The Principles of Product Development Flow by Reinertsen. Reinertsen takes exception with the over simplified or at least naïve implementations of ToC (et. al.).

ToC brings us to the kanban process which is gaining popularity. Kanban by David J Anderson is a wonderful book,but lacks specifics on how to do the metrics when the rubber meets the road. Subscribe to the kanbandev yahoo group. Anderson's Agile Management I would say is more advanced and should be read by serious agile managers or coaches. It's a good cross section of lean, pre-kanban, ToC, etc.

Rother's book Learning To See is about value stream mapping from a manufacturing perspective. I enjoyed working through it, but i'm weird that way. Most people in software development organizations won't need this.

Scale
There are books on scaling agile: Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development by Larman and Vodde. And Scaling Software Agility, Leffingwell.

Manage
Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo is the most important book for anyone leading or managing IT knowledge workers.

Dan Pink's Drive: understand autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Not sure whether to put DeMarco's Slack, Getting Past Burnout, Busywork and the Myth of Total Efficiency here or up under Lean. I have a blog post on slack.

Fin
Sadly, I cannot recommend this book, even thought I have a chapter in it: XP 2003 Proceedings.

Finally, find a local agile/lean/scrum user group to attend and make connections. I can tell you all about the ones in Atlanta and can connect you to people who know all about the ones in Ohio and Chicago and RTP, NC.

There are probably a thousand other folks with their own agile reading list. I wouldn't mind it at all if you were to post your list here or link from here to your site.

Slack and the Manager's Role in Scrum

photo credit: flikr dcwriterdawn

In his book Slack, Tom DeMarco makes the point is that you can't be creative when you are overworked or overburdened. Stress kills innovation as does busyness. To be creative, your mind needs to feel free and unallocated, uncluttered even.

In a waterfall shop, slack abounds. There's the project fuzzy front end where some are idle. There's the test and fix or stabilization cycle at the end of the project where some folks are slammed, and others are trying to not look as idle as they are. And there are times in the middle where this person or that one doesn't have enough work to do. Or maybe they are blocked. If you can put that slack time to good use improving the product, the work environment, your skills, or your process, then good for you.

The problem with Scrum and eXtreme Programming in particular and with iterative development in general is that they wring all the slack out of an organization. There is no unaccounted for time on a Scrum team. You must deliver value in every story. Every sprint must deliver valuable working software. You must help your teammates finish their work for the sprint if they get in a bind. Or add another small story to the sprint if possible. "If ya ain't working on the sprint backlog, ya ain't getting paid!" Little slack leads to little time to look around leads to little improvement.

Thankfully, we have a solution.

We have more than one, in fact. Let me first tell you about the solution that this article is not about. You can introduce slack into your organization with regular slack time. There are numerous well known examples of companies that do things like Fed-Ex days, time set aside for self-directed work, not allocated to Prioritized Product Backlog Items. Dan Pink recently endorsed this approach. As an aside, I like what Dan has to say about what motivates knowledge workers.

But there's another solution to the lack of slack that we should entertain first. In fact, you are less likely to do the FedEx day if you aren't first doing the following. But to introduce this I must first point out something that Scrum says about managers. Scrum doesn't say a whole lot about managers, but it does say at least this: mangers must stop assigning tasks. Too bad that many managers get their power and sense of self-worth from this activity. Deciding how to get the work done in Scrum is left up to the self-organizing cross-functional team. The people who can best decide how the work should be done are those closest to the work.

Just to be clear, managers in Scrum and eXtreme Programming should not:

• make assignments
• hand out work
• direct people or tell them what to do
• make the hiring decision solo
• SW architecture (in my opinion - debatable)
• do work
• be an individual contributor
• be a hero

Well, gosh, then shat should a manager do? Well, I'll tell ya! You could manage more people. You can still step in when the team needs help (but not too quickly). You are still an agent of the company, handling legal stuff, signing off on expenditures, etc. You can still manage risks, especially if you are a skilled Project Manager.

But you could also do something else.





Be the Slack.

Move up to a higher level of value to the organization. Be the slack that has been wrung out of the team. Here are some specific suggestions:

• Keep an eye on the system, looking for improvements
• Ensure cross-training is happening (not by making assignments, but making the team handle it)
• Understand the dynamics of the organization
• Understand how value is created
• Protect the team from interference
• Make the organization effective; learn to look at it as a system
• Support the team
• Clear roadblocks
• Provide good facilities -- fight the facilities police (better: teach facilities how value is created and how better facilities helps you guys create value)
• Ditto with more powerful computers, sufficient build machines and test machines (the people on the team are far more expensive than a PC)
• Use Derby's 13 essential questions for managers or the book on this topic she is working on
• Read Deming
• Watch interpersonal interaction -- watch when one team member pulls back, withdraws in a brainstorm (for example)
• Help the team learn TDD by making room for them to learn (time - remove the schedule pressure while they learn)
• Understand the capacity of the team (also a team and scrummaster job)
• Think through policies, procedures and reward/review systems and improve them (what messages do they send?)
• Understand what motivates knowledge workers (see the previous reference to Pink) and let creating that kind of environment be an imperative

I contend that we should focus on continuous improvement of process, of people’s skills and knowledge, with a strong focus on empowerment and self-organization. And work on open, honest feedback. You’ll have better results if you do all that and just completely scrap the individual annual review.* I love quoting Drucker here: "“the average person takes 6 months recovering from a performance review.”

I'm really straying off the point of the article there. Let me bring it back together by saying you can't do a good job with this other higher value stuff if you are down in the weeds assigning tasks to people. Delegate more. In fact, delegate everything, freeing yourself up to be the ultimate in valuable slack.


----------------------------------------------------------------
* Not sure if that sentence is in my words or whether I've co-opted someone else's way of saying that. I think I've read a similar sentiment in either Management 3.0 or in Coaching Agile Teams. I don't think I've plagiarized there, but will gladly give due credit if I have.

How to Engage an Agile Coach

I'm often asked by companies how they can engage me as an Agile Coach. What would you do? For how long would you be there? How long would it take? My response is always tailored given their specific context. Each situation is different. However, here's an attempt to give a very general response to that question.

In short, you can pretty much design your own ideal engagement with an Agile Coach. I'm sure there is a coach out there that will be willing work with you toward your goals or activities, whatever they are. Although some coaches only do deals of a certain size or of a certain type of work, there is generally lots of flexibility to be found.

For example, depending on what you are after and on your budget, the number of days and the frequency of involvement can vary.

• Very limited: A day or a small number of days
• Regular or periodic: A day or three each iteration
• Full time but temporary: like 1 to 6 months
• Full time permanent: unbounded

A single small team that just wants some outside eyes once, or once in a while, can get help with a small budget. Involving the coach with more teams and more people typically means more days are needed to accomplish your improvement or transformation goals. An organization looking for coaching for many large non-collocated teams is a much larger deal.

The engagement can be just as simple as "hey, I think we're doing pretty good, but we'd like to have a fresh set of eyes to point out what we're overlooking." That could lead to any number of recommendations that the team is free to tackle on their own. Or that could lead to an additional engagement designed to address some specific issues. Or an engagement can be as broad as be here every day and work with us for three months.

As for the type of work that a coach may do for you, the work of the coach may be in the form of training and workshops, mentoring, coaching, consulting/advising, or getting his hands dirty.

Here are some examples of what you might engage a coach to help you with. This is not an exhaustive list.

• Limiting WIP and setting limits
• Using Kanban and Lean metrics
• Eliminating delay, prioritizing work via cost of delay, and improving flow
• A3 problem solving
• Demonstrate many retrospective techniques, lead retrospectives, mentor others as they use these techniques
• Spotting and removing impediments and managing risks
• Creating and sizing / estimating the release backlog, using velocity
• Identifying the MMF set
• Story mapping
• Project chartering, vision casting
• Planning and preplanning
• Communicating
• Using BVCs and information radiators, addressing why they are stale and not being used
• Space and facilities
• Pair programming, SOLID design, emergent architecture, TDD, CI, continuous deployment, etc.
• Defining Done
• Coding katas
• Design patterns, refactoring, etc., for example through lunch-n-learns
• Designing and tasking-out of stories; design review; shared task list and working as a team on each story
• A myriad of dysfunctions
• Issues with interpersonal relationships, working agreements, appreciation, active listening and working as a genuine team instead of as a simple working group, team accountability
• Team goals, rewards, recognition, MBOs and other HR/management policies
• The management role, including management influence and interference, people management
• Scrum of scrums, multi-layer scrum and kanban
• Working effectively with remote workers
• Project portfolio management
• Documentation
• Q&A - Address the team's concerns and questions such as:
  
  • "How should we handle defects and minor changes in our specific context? Plan them and estimate them? Treat them as high priority and don't plan/estimate?"
  • "What should we do if we don't finish a story in the iteration?"
  • "On what day of the week should we have planning?"
  • "We're considering changing the way we do xxxxxx, what do you think?"
  • "We have work left over at the end of each iteration. What do we do?"
    

This list could go on and on and on. Each coach has their specialties and strengths and would come up with a somewhat different list.

Give me a call and we'll set up a time to craft an engagement of your own, suitable for your needs and your context.

What is an Agile Coach?

This is an unusual post for me in that it's just a quote from someone else. I wanted a pointer to it from my blog, so here it comes. Brian Bozzuto over at BigVisible describes an Agile Coach thusly:

An Agile Coach is a professional, working internally as a full time employee or externally as a hired consultant, who is working to help realize a profound organizational change to better embrace the values and principles espoused in the Agile Manifesto. Specifically, this is a person who is doing a blend of a number of activities based on the situation to help that organization overcome barriers to change – be they technical, organizational, or skills based. One of the key values of such a person is their ability to play different roles based on the context, and a high level of awareness of these different potential roles can be a critical factor in their effectiveness.

You should go read the rest of Brian's article.

Compact Crank: You Want One #roadcycling

Earlier this year I finally had Atlanta Cycling put a compact crank on my road bike. I'm here to tell you about it. If you know all about bicycles and cranks and stuff, this article isn't for you. This is for those who are wondering if they should change out their standard for a compact crank. If you are wondering this as you struggle climbing hills, then you could just stop reading now and go ahead change your crank. I can say with confidence that you should. Read on if you want to understand what this is all about.

Note that I'm assuming that you don't already have a three-ring crank. If you have a three-ring crank, the only thing a compact crank might do for you is save a very small amount of weight. It will not make it easier to get up hills because a compact crank's smallest ring is going to be larger than your triple's smallest ring. Stick with what you have.

Background

The crank-set is the two or three rings with teeth connected to the crank arms. The crank arms are connected to the pedals. The pedals are connected to the cleats. The cleats are connected to the shoes. The shoes are connected to the foot bone. The foot bone's connected to the...

Anyway, a regular crank typically has 39 teeth on one ring and about 52 teeth on the other. A compact crank typically has 34 and 48, or maybe a couple more. The lower number of teeth in the compact crank-set allows you to spin faster in your lowest gear, making it easier to get up hills.

Notice that I didn't say easy. I said easier. Don't set your expectations too high or you'll be disappointed. A compact crank will not make a hard hill easy. But it can help you make it up the hill without having to mash as hard.

As an aside, developing a fast cadence is good. 'Fast' is, say, faster than 90 RPM. A compact crank isn't going to help you have 90 RPM up a steep hill. I'm just saying that a fast cadence everywhere else is better for your knees and muscles (it's easier n them). It's also better for your heart and lungs (gives them a better workout, which they could probably use). Your heart and lungs can recover more quickly and take punishment for longer periods. There are other benefits to a fast cadence such as the ability to respond and accelerate more quickly. Coach Levi wrote a nice article on this topic.

The Verdict

I like my new crank. As I said above, if you are thinking you might want a compact crank but you are just not sure, just be sure. I'm sure; you want one. I can get to the top now with less fatigue. Not "no fatigue"; less fatigue. If you don't ride much, you might not even notice how much easier it is. I ride the same hills every week and have done so for 4 years or so. That's enough riding that I can notice the difference. If you ride some big hill only once per month, you might not notice the benefit of the compact crank, but it's there.

I also enjoy the 3-gaps North Georgia mountain route much better with a compact crank.

Concerns Debunked

Some people say that a compact crank will make you run out of gear and cut your top-end speed. Eh, well, maybe. They note that you'll "spin-out". Spin-out isn't wiping out, thankfully. Spin-out is when you can't or don't want to pedal any faster. With the compact, I spin-out north of 37 MPH (though I don't remember when I ran out of gear with the standard -- sorry). And I can still coast down hill at 40 miles per hour on my rides. That's fast enough for me. Besides, I'd just as soon coast down hill to rest up for the next climb. I don't need any more top-end. I'd rather enjoy the easier up-hills than the faster down-hills.

Another concern you might have is that you'll run out of gear on the small chain ring and that you'll therefore need to spend more time in the big chain ring. You may be concerned about having to do more shifting. Well, I guess this is true. I do spend more time in the big chain ring. And I do change gears using the front derailleur more often. However, it's not quite as much as you might think. Besides, with the compact crank I can start off from a standstill in the big chain ring as long as I'm not pointing up hill. You need to get good at shifting anyway and if your bike doesn't shift well, fix it.

If you are young, strong and getting stronger, a compact crank may make you slower and cause you to plateau. If you find a mountain climb strenuous, but you can do it and enjoy it in a standard crank, then keep using the standard. It will make you stronger. But if you are young, strong, and getting stronger, then this article probably isn't for you anyway.

Cadence

I wasn't expecting to have a faster average cadence with the compact, but it looks like I do. I was expecting my cadence on most of the route to be the same, with a faster cadence only on the worst hills. I thought the time spent in the lowest gear would be short enough to not impact the average over the length of the ride.

My average cadence on my regular ride used to be 84 to 88. Now it's 87 to 90. Nice. But I do not think it has impacted my pace.

Here's an example with the regular crank: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/29757090

Here's a comparable example with the compact: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/72575356

Same pace, same time of year (winter), faster cadence.

My Dunwoody Cycling group does a faster pace in the summer and fall. My otherwise comparable rides with the regular crank have a lower cadence: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/55940780

But I'm Not Mechanical

I'm quite mechanical and am confident that I could have figured out what to buy and how to change out the crank-set. But I'm not really interested in bicycle maintenance these days. Too many other time demands. If you enjoy bicycle maintenance, then you probably know whether you could do this yourself. If you are unsure, then take it to a bicycle shop. That's what I did and don't regret it.

What's it cost?

I paid less than $350 (January 2011) for a new compact chain ring and crank arms and new shifter cable guides, including labor. It would have been more like $500 if I went with a Shimano Ultrega crank-set, but I went the cheaper route. There are certainly lots of variables, so your cost could be much different.

Recommendation

Just do it. If you switch (or have switched) to a compact crank, share your experience in the comments.

Partial Points and an Unstable Velocity

Years ago, back when I was dumber…

Once every three months or so we'd have some incomplete story and we'd split the points, allocating some to this iteration and some to the next iteration. That's dumb.

Instead, for the last couple years when this happens I give no points to this iteration and points remaining (we estimate the remaining work) to the next iteration. Back then, the lower velocity would have caused angst in upper management, but read on.

We estimated our stories in points. We did not estimate our tasks. Our tasks were very fine grained. Most tasks were half an hour to half a day. We did not come up with tasks in planning. I wouldn't change any of that. In fact, it's what I currently try to get my clients to do. The difficult part seems to be the very fine grained tasks.

For us, 0 and 1 point stories were trivial. Normal estimates could be 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, or 40 points. If it was 40 or below, the story could go into an iteration. We would also use 60 and 100 point estimates, but those stories had to be split. Our problem was that the 30s and 40s were always underestimated relative to the 5s through 20s. The scale wasn't linear. We knew this. Knowing it didn't fix it. That made our velocity unstable.

Our unstable velocity caused lots of heart-burn in the upper management ranks and contributed to a lack of trust. If I had a do-over, I would solve this by narrowing the range of estimates allowed which would drive more of the larger stories to be split. I'd limit the range to, say, 5 to 20.

I've also considered solving an unstable velocity by clearly setting a high level of commitment for each iteration. Not stretch goal. Not aggressive goal. A high level of commitment. The team would of course still say what they would commit to. But I would have expected them to meet it. (This has sense been deemphasized in Scrum, and I didn't do it then and I wouldn't do it on most teams now, but it might have helped in this situation, as I describe next.) This surely would have initially led the team to commit to a smaller amount of work. And it would have eventually led to more care being made at the start of the iteration and in advance of the iteration in order to have a well thought out plan. We would have gotten back to committing to the normal amount of work over the long term, but would have given us a much more stable velocity and more predictable pace. Maybe. If done wrong it would have just angered the programmers.

Another way of getting at smaller stories and better planning would have been for us to drop from two-week to one-week iterations. That would also force us to split the larger stories. We already had a great design/task-creation/review approach, but we did that design just in time, during the iteration, immediately before development. With one-week iterations, we could do that work for each story on the 1st day of the iteration between planning and commitment.

And yet another way to crack this nut would have been to switch to a cycle time metric (as in Kanban) or publish only an average velocity measured over four to six iterations.