Vertical slicing is a fundamental agile technique for breaking up a large piece of functionality into something that is easier, safer, and quicker to work with. There are several critical benefits of vertically slicing the implementation of a DW/BI solution: Reduce the feedback cycle.
What is vertical story slicing in agile?
One of the challenges I continually observe Scrum teams struggle with in their Agile adoption is the concept of vertical story slicing. As described by Wikipedia a vertical slice “refers to a cross-sectional slice through the layers that form the structure of the software code base.”
What is a vertical slice?
As described by Wikipedia a vertical slice “refers to a cross-sectional slice through the layers that form the structure of the software code base.” For example, a simple vertical slice would encompass the data access layer, the business logic layer (a.k.a. middleware layer) and the user interface layer.
What is a vertical slice of cake user story?
A vertical slice of cake means a user story should contain work for as many of the different layers as possible. A user story is broken down vertically, they are broken down in such a way that smaller items still result in working, demonstrable, software, or a specific working feature useful for the user.
What is a horizontal slice in software development?
Work in the database layer to store/fetch the information. A horizontal slice tends to decompose problems into technical layers which may seem to match well with the technical skills of team members, i.e. they’re split amongst a database team, a UI team, and a server team each of which is responsible for their own tasks.
What is vertical and horizontal slicing in agile?
By Nick Hotz June 25, 2019 Last Updated: May 2, 2022 Agile, Life Cycle. Traditional software approaches favor developing software layer-by-layer (horizontal slicing) while software agilists strive to deliver software by thin end-to-end value streams (vertical slicing).
What is the purpose of a vertical slice?
A vertical slice is a fully-playable portion of a game that shows its developer's intended player experience. This means its key features and systems are all working together properly, complete with assets that represent – and this is important – final quality.
What is slicing in agile?
Many times, the team keeps splitting the user stories into smaller increments of value, so they can complete the story in a sprint. This process is called "story-splitting" or "story-slicing". This becomes an important skill for product owners as they refine the backlog and work with the team in sprint planning.
What is a vertical slice meeting?
Vertical Slicing is a holistic process where an organization is split the organization into small cross level and cross functional change teams. Each change team consists of members from each level of the organization (i.e. Scrum teams, middle management and executives).
Why is vertical slicing important in Agile?
Teams that use Agile development create products in increments, or vertical slices, that are independently usable. A vertical slice incorporates pieces of each aspect of the final product in a smaller form so that the user gets a better idea of the full experience and gains value faster.
How do you slice stories in agile?
How to Split User Stories?INVEST. INVEST MODEL — STORY WRITING. ... Think MVP. ... Breaking down the stories by Acceptance Criteria. ... Break down by Happy/Unhappy Path. ... Breaking down by test scenarios / test cases. ... Breaking down by user personas. ... Quality Attributes.
What is a vertical user story?
A user story is broken down vertically, they are broken down in such a way that smaller items still result in working, demonstrable, software, or a specific working feature useful for the user. In other words, a vertical slice means a bit of every layer.
What is a horizontal slice?
What Is A Horizontal Slice? A horizontal slice is a sliver of work. It is a breakdown of the technical layers, components, tasks, and type of work. It is like slicing a cake horizontally, which does not allow for the perfect bite.
How do you slice a story?
0:5510:17How to Split user stories? User Stories Slicing Techniques - S.P.I.D.RYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipWe have seen may references to vertical and horizontal slicing. And we make the analogy with slicingMoreWe have seen may references to vertical and horizontal slicing. And we make the analogy with slicing the cake when talking about the vertical and horizontal slicing. Rather than giving the customer
How do you split user stories in Agile?
You split a user story by identifying what you need to make it work, and then later adding in other functionality to make it perform even better (such as making it faster, easier, more scalable, or more secure).
What is T-shaped skills in Agile?
A metaphor used to describe a person with deep vertical skills in a specialized area (such as UX design) as well as broad but not necessarily very deep skills in other relevant areas (such as testing and documentation). Team members with T-shaped skills better enable swarming behavior.
What does ready mean in Agile?
The Definition of Ready generally takes “ready” to mean “ready to start production development work”. The general theme of a Definition of Ready is that the team knows enough about this task / backlog item to start work on a stable problem, e.g. to take into a sprint.
Why do slices happen in golf?
A slice happens when a sidespin is put on the ball, causing it to curve to the right for a right-handed player and to the left for a left-handed player. Sidespin to the right is caused when the clubface is open (pointed right) relative to the path the club is traveling as the club impacts the ball.
Why do most golfers slice?
The most common cause of a slice is an open club face. This open club face will give you contact that isn't square and often feels like a “side swipe.” The most common cause of an open club face is an incorrect grip as your hand position will directly reflect in the face.
Why do you slice a driver?
The main reason that a driver will slice, but not the irons, is the length of the club. With a golf driver being longer than a golf iron, it is much harder to square the club face and release the club at the proper time. Golfers of all ability levels struggle with this concept.
What is a slice shot in tennis?
The slice serve is a type of serve for tennis players that adds sidespin to a first serve or second serve. Unlike flat serves that are hit primarily from the back, or kick serves that are hit “up” to add topspin, slice serves brush along the side, effectively changing the spin and bounce of the ball.
Who is responsible for vertical slice creation?
The responsibility of ensuring vertical slice creation is with the Product Owner although, in full agile spirit, each member of the team needs to take part in ensuring vertical slice creation.
Why is it important to build software in agile?
Another dimension of complexity comes about because software is invariably delivered as a service over a cloud — public, private or hybrid. Thus, in addition to the software product that consists of the core of the logic, it is also necessary to line up the necessary tools useful for day-to-day operations & maintenance , the so-called DevOps tools. Therefore, at the end of each sprint, the incremental output needs to have not only the newly-developed software, but also the attendant DevOps tools.
What is a vertical slice?
The term vertical slice has origins in the world of video game development. A vertical slice is a portion of a game that developers can use as proof of concept to procure funding from stakeholders. The slice can be played independently and offers a glimpse of the impressive features that the final game will include.
Vertical slicing in project management
The principles of vertical slicing in video game development are equally applicable to the realms of business and project management. Managers create vertical slices when they make benchmarks or milestones for a project.
Applications of vertical slicing in Agile development
Vertical slices go hand in hand with Agile software development. This development methodology focuses on cross-functional teams that constantly strive to improve quality and adapt to customer needs by offering smaller deliverables.
How monday.com helps your team manage cross-functional work
To use vertical slices appropriately, teams must be collaborative and cross-functional. Members of each project team must be able to communicate, share their progress, and offer feedback throughout the process.
Increasing collaboration with vertical slicing
Whether you are a project manager, software developer, video game designer, or business owner, vertical slicing may improve the quality of your outcomes and make your work process more effective.
How does vertical slice help in Agile?from agilerant.info
You gain value when the work is done. If you compare it to the Waterfall model flow of work, it takes much longer before done. Thus, Agile gains value more quickly. The time-to-market in Agile is reduced! You will create shippable software much faster.
What is Vertical Slicing?from agilerant.info
Vertical Slicing is where you slim down a work item to a narrow focus. In other words, breaking the work into small pieces. Yet, the pieces have all the functions to be stand-alone. It may or may not require more features to truly be useful. However, as a piece of the system, it works on its own. Ultimately, it is a process of breaking up work. Defining and organizing work items into smaller pieces that work on their own and can be executed on in a given sprint.
Why is incremental delivery important in agile?from agilerant.info
Incremental delivery opens the door to good feedback loops. As a result, it helps with quick learning by the agile team. Lastly, incremental delivery allows for changes along the way. It is flexible and responsive to changing needs. Responding to change helps the team to build the right things. This helps avoid the pitfalls of Waterfall development. Where you can be too far along to effectively respond to change. The quick feedback loop in agile helps that. It allows for course correction. Which you get from Vertical Slices of work.
What is the cherry on top of Agile?from agilerant.info
But what is the cherry on top you ask? For Agile teams, it’s consistent delivery of functionality and value. An iterative development process, with continuous delivery of pieces of work. All building and gaining value. Agile development using vertically sliced user stories enables the work to be done by the team and avoids the pressure associated with software development.
Why is Agile software development so difficult?from agilerant.info
This work can be extremely difficult to understand and execute on in the timeframes required. At a high level, this is because the job to be done is unknown. Or in other words, how to accomplish the goals of the work, is unknown. When starting on work, an Agile team is often simultaneously seeking to understand the goals of the work while also creating a game plan to meet said goals. I would say it is more often than not, that teams don’t know exactly how to accomplish the work when they first start. They must work on the problem and create the solution as they go. Vertical Slicing is a concept and practice that is here to help.
What is incremental delivery?from agilerant.info
Incremental delivery is about consistent, progressive, and piece-meal progress. Progress on work items and goals. By consistency, you are delivering work at regular times. You also delivery quality at regular times. By progressive, you are building onto prior work items. By piece-meal, I mean that the work is small and you can manage it. When you can break work down into pieces, you can refine and get more specific detail to enable the work. This is how to improve user stories. By getting smaller with the work and enabling completion, that is is how to deliver incrementally on your work.
What are the drawbacks of horizontal slicing?from agilerant.info
The drawbacks of this Horizontal Slicing can be severe. As you create functionality without knowing the rest of the system. It’s difficult to create a new database accurately. Especially without knowing the front-end fields it supports.
What is your favorite retrospective icebreakers (Remote)?
I wanted to ask the community what icebreakers they find fun or came across with in sprint retrospective to get an idea for facilitating my first sprint retrospective.
Best videogame for team building activities
Hello everyone, I want to have a team building activity with my distributed team focused on playing some videogame together — it has come to my attention that this is an interest most of my team members share.
How to test in Scrum (non-software projects)
I'm a programme manager for a non-profit in London, UK and have been interested in Agile now for the last 3 years. After a lot of learning about agile and testing some things out at work, I went and got my CSM last year. I'm keen to implement Scrum with a project which develops an online course for sports coaches.
What is vertical slicing?
Vertical slicing in software development is taking a backlog that might have some database component, some business logic and a user interface and breaking it down into small stepwise progressions where each step cuts through every slice.
What is horizontal slice?
A horizontal slice is basically a slice through the feature or backlog that horizontally divides up the architecture. Most things are built this way. If you were to build a house, you would probably start by slicing up the project horizontally. You would first pour the foundation. Then put up the walls.
What is the difference between Agile and building a house?
The big difference is that in Agile software development, true Agile development, you don’t know exactly what you are going to build until you are done building it.
Is horizontal slicing a violation of Agile?
Based on that premise alone, you can see that horizontal slicing is in direct violation to one of Agile methodology’s core tenants .
Is it better to plan small amounts of rework than to build up an entire feature one horizontal slice at?
It is better to plan small amounts of rework than to build up an entire feature one horizontal slice at a time and have to rework huge parts of the feature that weren’t planned for.
Is there progression of functionality that can be found for a large backlog?
There is almost always some progression of functionality that can be found for a large backlog.
Is it easier to slice up a backlog horizontally?
I’m not going to lie to you. It is MUCH easier to slice up a backlog horizontally.
Why is vertical slicing important?
Vertical slicing allows teams to demonstrate incremental progress thereby increasing transparency. Just like no self-respecting dessert lover would accept a horizontal slice of cake that might be missing the top layer of icing or the yummy filling in the middle, stakeholders appreciate seeing a pie chart or the first section of a report in a Sprint Review versus fragments of Java code for a web service.
What is vertical story slicing?
middleware layer) and the user interface layer. A vertically sliced story should also encompass the testing that corresponds to the functionality being delivered.
Why Vertical Slice?
The traditional approach is horizontal splitting and involves breaking down the features into the work that has to be done at architectural layers: one story for the UI, another for the database, front-end, and back-end are split up into groups of sub-tasks. This may work but fails actually at independent and valuable of INVEST guidelines for a good user story.
What is horizontal slice?
A horizontal slice tends to decompose problems into technical layers which may seem to match well with the technical skills of team members, i.e. they’re split amongst a database team, a UI team, and a server team each of which is responsible for their own tasks.
What is user story in agile?
In Agile Development, User Stories are in the form of user features, epics, user stories, and timeboxed tasks in the product backlog managed by the product owner together with the agile team. A user feature may be proposed by the users or other stakeholders and put into the product backlog by the product owner. These features can’t be implemented directly and subject to prioritize and refined as it comes up in the order from the bottom and gradually to the top of the product backlog called “product backlog refinement”.
What does a vertical slice of cake mean?
A vertical slice of cake means a user story should contain work for as many of the different layers as possible.
What is a feature team?
Feature teams will build all the components needed to deliver the feature to the end-user regardless of the technology stack in which the code is needed.
What is the traditional approach to a product?
The traditional approach is to break down the product more or less logically and meaningfully into components and to assign component teams to them. However, these components are completely irrelevant to the customer’s point of view.
Can you slice a story horizontally?
Even though we may call these horizontal slices user stories, and create them in form of user stories, they are in fact can’t deliver the value to the end customer without interaction or integration with other layers, components, or other building blocks of the software system. It is like slicing a cake horizontally, which does not allow for users to have the perfect bite.
What are the layers of an application?
In this example, there are three main layers in the application: the user interface, a middle tier, and a back-end database. Commonly (and traditionally), each part would be worked on separately by different teams (or at least individuals), likely at different times. Because each team is working separately but on the same project, the teams will need to talk to each other and coordinate deliverables, requiring “hand-offs” and “integration touch-points” to make sure that each team did what they needed before transferring the work to the next team.
Do component teams work?
Component teams, by definition, work on only a part of the whole. When they complete their work, there’s still work to do; there’s still value that’s not yet delivered. And many component teams need to hand-off work to other teams, meaning delays and possibilities for miscommunication or misunderstandings. The fewer of those we can have, the better.
