User Stories: Making the Vertical Slice cover image

User Stories: Making the Vertical Slice

How to use vertical user story slicing as part of software development and agile scrum adoption.

Profile image of Kim Poremski
Apr 09, 2018 • 5 min read
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Product Specifications
Vertical Story Slicing
Product Increment
User Stories
Software Feature

Summary

Kim Poremski narrates how she worked with a Product Owner to improve efficiency in a team's backlog that relied on horizontally structured user stories by transforming them into vertical slices. Together, they defined vertically sliced features and stories that allowed the team to demonstrate incremental progress and achieve better outcomes. She adds that horizontal stories do not meet a well-informed story structure of role, functionality, and outcome as well as the INVEST criteria.

Takeaways

  • A vertical slice refers to a cross-sectional slice through the layers that form the structure of the software codebase.
  • Horizontally sliced user stories are in-reality tasks and do not meet the INVEST criteria. In the essence, they are not Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, or Testable.
  • Vertical slicing allows teams to demonstrate incremental progress thereby increasing transparency.

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