Teams that have mastered Scrum know that the key to success lies in a just-in-time, increasingly refined, breakdown of work on the Product Backlog. They prefer Sprint Backlogs with many small (functional) items instead of just a few large ones. Smaller items improve flow and reduce the risk of failing the sprint. But how do you do this?
How does this help your team?
Breaking down large items is a skill that Scrum teams have to learn. While it is often easy to break down work into horizontal slices, across technical boundaries or components, this results in items that cannot be delivered on their own. What good is a new table in the database if the interface doesn't support it yet?
This cheat sheet captures 10 strategies that allow teams to break down work into vertical slices. Each slice can be released and inspected on its own. For each strategy, we include questions that you can ask to help Scrum Teams slice in that manner.
What do you receive?
- A PDF with the 10 strategies, including questions to determine how to apply them.
More inspiration
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This paper describes the 10 strategies in more detail
- We also offer a physical deck of 50 Powerful Questions that includes these 10 strategies.