ACE London Slicing for Products and Stories

© Copyright 2010 – 2014 Sprint Agile Ltd All rights reserved.

Matt Roadnight

Jan 2014

[email protected]

Agile Coaching Exchange

Slicing

2 . © Copyright 2010 - 2014 Sprint Agile Ltd All rights reserved.

Thanks …..

– Stuart Young – Illustration Station

– Peter Marshall – Equal Experts

– Antony Marcano - RiverGlide


Slicing

Product Slicing

Story Slicing


Approach


Product Slicing


Principles of Agile Product Delivery

In your groups discuss

some principles for

Agile Product Delivery

e.g.

Potentially Shippable

Capture on Post Its – One per post it


Product Slice – A definition

In your groups discuss challenges to applying principles for

Agile Product Delivery when defining Product Slices

Capture these on post-its … one per post-it

A coherent Product release

that can be made available in

a handful of iterations for

feedback

Product Slicing


Tools to define Product Slices

Jeff Patton

Story Map

Product Slicing


Flat, Linear Backlogs

Flat backlogs, ordered by value…OK for delivery

BUT

What is the big picture ?

What does the system do ?

How do we represent product slices?

Product Slicing


A visual way to view an end to end system Product Slicing


Slicing- Terminology

Sub Tasks,

User Stories

Sub Tasks,

User Stories

User Stories

User Tasks

User Stories

User Tasks

Sub Tasks,

User Stories

Epics Feature Theme User

Activities

Release Goal

User Goal

User Journey

Capability

Potentially Shippable Increment

Product Slicing

Sources:

User Stories Applied Mike Cohn

Software by Numbers Denne and Cleland-Huang

Agile Software Requirements Dean Leffingwell

Agile Experience Design Ratcliffe, Lindsay and McNeill

Story Map Articles Jeff Patton


User Story Map

Feature

Story Story Story

Story

Story Story

Story Story Story Story

Story

Story Story Story

Story

Story

Story

Story Story

Story

Story

Feature Feature Feature

Release

Goal

Release

Goal

Journey through the system

Product Slicing


Mi-Card

Mi-Card

Product Slicing


Exercise – Create a Story Map

Open Envelope #1 and lay out tasks and features.

Order the tasks by value against the customer goal

Product Slicing


Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Release

Goal

Release

Goal

Linear Product Backlog

Prioritised &

Ordered

Product Slicing


Exercise

Move cards out of the Story Map and Create a linear Product Backlog

Put in some cut offs for releases

Product Slicing


Product Backlog Refinement

Story Map User Tasks

Release Goals

Journeys

Linear Backlog User Stories

Backlog

Refinement /

Grooming /

Ready

Product Slicing


Exercise

Refer back to the Agile Principles for Agile Product Delivery and the challenges in applying those principles

Discuss how Story Maps could help address those challenges, and any other benefits from using Story Maps

Product Slicing


Story Slicing


Discuss Agile Principles for working in an iteration or to a cadence

e.g. cross functional team

Story Slicing


Story – A definition

In your groups discuss challenges to applying principles to working in

an iteration when creating stories that are “Ready” to create a product

increment from. Capture on Post-Its – one per post it.

A Story that is ready to create a product increment from …..

“…understandable to customers and developers, testable, valuable to

the customer and small enough so that the programmers can build

half a dozen in an iteration.”

Kent Beck, 2001

Story Slicing

User stories are short, simple description of a

feature told from the perspective of the person

who desires the new capability, usually a user or

customer of the system. They typically follow a

simple template:

As a <type of user>, I want <some goal> so that

<some reason Source : Mike Cohn, Mountain Goat Software


Story Slicing


Your Linier Backlog

You will probably have something like ….

Lets assume that the teams are working through the first goal … and

you need to work on :

“Find out about specific transactions on one of my Mi-Cards”

Story Slicing


Take the tasks and work them up a bit …

Stuff that may happen ….

Initial refinement – Get out an initial sketch

– Identify further tasks

Further refinement – Generate some stories for the user tasks

Stories provide more focus than the tasks

Principles are generally well understood

Encourages use of acceptance criteria

Work through based on value / prioritisation (Linier Backlog)

Story Slicing


Exercise - Initial Refinement

Open envelope #2 ….

Have a look at the design sketch and additional tasks, have a chat, can you see where the tasks map to the UI design?

Lay out your cards in priority order, against your goal

Have a think about some user stories that could be formed from the tasks

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Release

Goal

Story Slicing


More refinement … translating to stories

Open Envelope #3

Place your user stories next to the appropriate card

Look at the acceptance criteria on the back of “Card Transactions – View a list of Transactions”

Story Slicing


All agree we are doing the “View a list of transactions “ first …

Most people get here OK, but not many people slice further ….

Assume it’s too big for a sprint, need to turn it around in 2-3 days

Story Slicing


Product owner

Too big for a sprint Don’t slice

‘horizontally’

Vertical slicing enables

PO to validate and

feedback

“Slicing” User Stories that are too big Story Slicing


Slicing Stories

Break them down into vertical slices of Functionality e.g.

– Sunshine Path

– Layer on exceptions after, and one at a time

Prioritise for business value, but also ensure that you allow the team time to produce backlog items that are Ready for Sprint Planning

Front End

Middle

Back End

Product Backlog

Item Slices

Story Slicing


Tool : Some approaches for Slicing Stories

Approach Description

Simplicity Do the simplest thing you could possibly work first and get it working end to end. You

have always got something to demonstrate. If that’s still too big then .....

By User Try focussing on a subset of users or a single user, start with the most valuable.

Process Pick the “Happy Path” first, the path that is taken the majority of the time. Add the

edge cases and exceptions as you go, be prepared to look at alternatives if you run

out of time or budget.

Data Set Limit the data set that you apply the functionality to, add others as you build and learn

from the first.

Input/ Output

Thinning

Can you simplify the input or output – remove fields or use a command line or

“rougher“ UI

Acceptance

Criteria

Take out some of your acceptance criteria and out them in another story

Architectural Defer Performance (but not for too long), defer internationalisation, stub out

interfaces or hard code elements.

Story Slicing

A summary of a number of approaches from these sources like …

Rachel Davies – Agile Coaching Blog

Bill Wake – XP 123 Article - 20 ways to split stories

Gottesdeiner & Gorman – Slicing Requirements for Agile Success Article


Tool : Slicing Grid

Architectural

Story Slicing


Slicing Grid - Example

Data Set

Data Set

Input / Output Thinning

Acceptance Criteria

&

Simplicity

Input / Output Thinning

Architectural

Story Slicing


Exercise- Envelope #4

Role Playing : Pick one of 4 Specialist roles

– Development, UX, Business, Test

– Each of you will have some additional information that you will need to collaborate on to get the full picture

USE the Systems View !!

Create a Slicing grid

Circle on your slicing Grid the simplest slice and then write a story for it

– NB – balance the detail between the front and back of the card

Story Slicing


Slicing Grid - Sample Output from Exercise (Top of Grid)


Slicing Grid - Sample Output from Exercise (Bottom of Grid)


Story Slicing


Exercise

Refer back to the Principles for working in an iteration and the challenges in applying those principles

Discuss how Slicing Approaches and the Slicing Grid could help address those challenges, and any other benefits from using these tools

Story Slicing


Slicing Wrap Up

Product Slicing

Story Slicing


[email protected]

ACE London Slicing for Products and Stories

Technology

Transcript of ACE London Slicing for Products and Stories