A Lot of Little Things Beats a Few Big Ones.
Big backlog items are more expensive, more wasteful, riskier, and more likely to need doing twice. Slicing is how a team stops carrying them — and slicing the obvious way, by layer, produces work that can't be demonstrated and isn't done.
Vertical, Not Horizontal.
Slice a story into a screen, a service, and a table and you have three things nobody can demo and a pile of debt.
One session on cutting them the other way:
- Why size is the problem — cost, waste, complexity, rework, risk
- Horizontal against vertical slicing, and what each leaves you holding
- Seven approaches you can apply to a real backlog item
- How to tell a slice that delivers value from one that only looks smaller
Includes the Story Slicing reference card.
Start whenever you like
Self-paced: 2 modules, Free.
What you'll learn
- Why bigger backlog items cost more and go wrong more often
- What horizontal slicing produces, and why it is debt rather than progress
- What vertical slicing produces: something demonstrable, and feedback you can act on
- Action slicing — breaking an item down by what the user does
- Data slicing — by the data elements involved
- Interface slicing — by the surfaces the work has to support
- Control slicing — by the cases and conditions that change the behaviour
- Risk-based slicing — carving out the part the team is most worried about
- Role-based slicing — by who is allowed to do what
- 0/1/Many slicing — by how many of a thing the case has to handle
Who this is for
- Teams whose stories routinely spill across Sprints
- Product Owners writing items nobody can finish in a week
- Scrum Masters watching refinement produce tasks instead of slices
- Developers who keep being asked to build a layer rather than a capability
What you get
- One recorded session you can take at your own pace
- The Story Slicing reference card
- A certificate of completion when you finish
- Yours permanently — free access doesn’t expire
The fine print
What’s covered
One session, then a backlog item of your own:
Module One
Focus: Why slice, and which way
- What size actually costs: expense, waste, complexity, rework, risk
- Horizontal slicing, and the debt it leaves behind
- Vertical slicing, and why demonstrable beats complete-looking
- The seven approaches, each worked through on a real item
Module Two
Focus: Slice one of your own
- Pick an item nobody expects to finish this Sprint
- Run it through the approaches until one cuts cleanly
- Check each slice against the test: could this be demonstrated?
- Keep the reference card to hand for the next refinement
Training formats
Self-paced online, start any time
Free — a free account is all that’s needed to enrol
Prerequisites
None.