Gives you an overview of Story Slicing Techniques presented during the Agile Canvass Meet up

1. User Story Slicing Techniques
Rammohan Jayaraman
Agile Coach & Consultant

2. User Stories
• What is an User Story?
• Three Cs of User Story
• INVEST Principle
• Splitting?

3. Based on Workflow
• Perform Disaggregation of Several Activities
• Identify Various Steps in Workflow
• Look for Answering following:
o What constitutes a Complete User flow Action?
o Can Steps be Simplified?
o Do we need all these Steps?
Example : As a customer, I want to place an order so that I
can fulfill my hunger
View the menu items
Choose the items I want to order
Review my order
Submit my order

4. Based on Operations
• CRUD operations done at Entity level
• Useful for activities related to Configuring/Managing items
• Check whether all operations are required?
Example : As a restaurant owner I want to manage my
restaurant profile so that people can order from my
restaurant
Create a restaurant profile
Update a restaurant profile
View a restaurant profile
Delete a restaurant profile

5. Based on Major Effort
• Involves identifying similar kind of activity
• Identify which option to be done first
• Substantial Effort for first story and reduced effort for rest
of other stories
Example : As a customer, I can pay for my order using Visa,
MasterCard, Amex, so that the transaction is ease
I can pay with one credit card type (choose the one
for implementation)
I can pay with all credit card types

6. Based on Data
• Check whether we really need to support multiple data
types?
• Find out what’s the most preferred option?
• Same functionality but different data type
• Support multiple data options such as language, Currency
etc
Example : As a customer, I want to view the menu in my native
language so that it helps me place order
Menu in English
Menu in Tamil
Menu in Hindi

7. Based on Business Rules
Example : As a restaurant owner, I want to accept and process valid
Online orders from my customer so that the customers are served
better with improved Customer Experience
Decline orders below 150 INR as I don’t make profit in them
Decline orders outside of 5KMs from my store location
Provide 10% discount for repeat customers
• Split Complex business rules as a separate Business rules
• Look for Various types of business rules
• Are all rules necessary?
• Can we apply simple rules?

8. Based on Roles
• Stories involves number of roles that is part of functionality
• Identify the roles involved in it
• Which role takes precedence?
Example :As a customer, I want to place an order so that I can fulfill my
hunger
As a Customer, I want to create an order
As a restaurant owner, I want to create an order

9. Spikes
• Split the story for performing investigation or research
• Team sees larger risk and uncertainty in implementation
Example :As a customer, I want to track the status of my order so that I
know when I can expect my food will arrive
Calculate time for order preparation and communicate with user
Integrate GPS with my Vehicle to determine duration

10. Activity
• Build a Job Search Portal
• Build an online news site
• Conducting an Assembly Election