From the course: Agile Requirements Foundations

Story slicing and splitting

From the course: Agile Requirements Foundations

Story slicing and splitting

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- Story-slicing, or splitting, is an essential skill and can prevent many of the typical challenges Agile teams experience. To build features effectively, and deliver user value in increments, the functionality needs to be broken down further into smaller user stories. Many times the team keeps splitting the user stories into smaller pieces of value, so they can complete the story in a sprint. This is called story-slicing or splitting. It helps ensure the team can estimate and commit to the work, and that the item is valuable to the customer and product owner. It also helps the team avoid breaking down the user story by technical tasks, which leaves the team with pieces that are difficult to test, demo and get feedback on. If user stories are chunked out by technical tasks or component, then the product owner will have a difficult time prioritizing, since the technical piece does not really have the business or customer value defined. Let's look at an example from our online coffee store case study. For the following user story, as a customer, I want to pay with a gift card so I can use the gift to buy something I want. Next, let's slice this story. It's likely too big for a team to commit to developing in a single sprint. Here is how you could split this story into smaller parts. As a customer, I want to store a gift card balance to my profile so I can use it later to make a purchase. And as a customer, I want to enter my gift card information to use it for my current checkout so I can pay with a gift card. Also, as a customer, I want to view my gift card balance so I can determine if I can use it for my next purchase. And last, as a customer, I want use my gift card balance for part of my purchase and another payment method for the remainder, so I can use the gift card to buy something larger than it's worth. Notice that I didn't split it by team tasks, nor by piece of technology, rather a user increment of value from a user perspective. There are many strategies to slice user stories, including slicing by user role or persona, business rules, scenarios, process or workflow steps, or a piece of data entered by a user. Please see the online payments case study exercise file for more information on these strategies and more examples. User story slicing is one of those skills that brings the team great success through efficient delivery of value in each tiny increment. So many of the challenges that Agile teams face can be solved or greatly improved by an Agile BA's skills in story-slicing.

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