I have observed many scrum masters struggling to guide teams on how to vertically slice user stories. Sometimes, it is due to a lack of technical expertise, which often causes us to lack confidence.
Without development knowledge, we often have to trust what our teams tell us. And if they say "this story can't be sliced", well, we sometimes shrug and move on.
But with a little additional study, even non-technical scrum masters (for I am one as well) can learn enough to gently guide skeptical teams to find slicing patterns where previously they saw none.
Some of the content of this video is based on the superb work of HumanizingWork.com. It was one of their people, Richard Lawrence, that I first heard about the story slicing patterns guide.
I studied it and used it over many years to questions friendly developers, architects, testers, and others, to learn as much as possible about how to make BIG stories smaller.
I hope this video will be helpful.
Please visit Humanizing Work: https://www.humanizingwork.com/the-humanizing-work-guide-to-splitting-user-stories/#getting-good
*Correction: When giving credit to Richard Lawrence of Humanizing Work, I inaccurately said that I had "worked" with Richard Lawrence. That is not what I meant to say. When I was working on a scrum team he coached us on his techniques. I was the recipient and beneficiary of his coaching. I never "worked with him". I apologize for that sloppy language. I submit myself for flogging. LOL
timecodes:
00:00 - Teaser Start
00:33 - In this Episode
02:05 - About this series
02:30 - Story Time How a struggling team learned to slice vertically
04:45 - Team Lion Heart metrics: Very unpredictable
06:10 - Retro output results Problems we can solve
08:20 - Which solutions are within our control
08:45 - Aligning team on Story Size
10:12 - Begin using detailed subtasks, with estimated hours
11:17 - Analyze the new sprint candidates to identify Slicing Candidates
12:40 - The Slicing Guide
15:40 - The Applicable Slicing Patterns
17:29 - Pattern 1 Workflow Steps
18:55 - Pattern 2 Business Rules
20:28 - Pattern 3 Operations
24:25 - Pattern 4 Interface Variations
24:20 - Pattern 5 Major Effort
26:19 - Pattern 6 Complex Coding
27:01 - Pattern 7 Data Variations
27:15 - Pattern 8 Non Functional Requirements
28:11 - Splitting Vs Slicing
30:23 - Ending