Story slicing vs BDUF — my answer to twitter queries
January 21st I posted a blog where I positioned Story Slicing vs Big Design Up Front (BDUF) and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).
January 21st I posted a blog where I positioned Story Slicing vs Big Design Up Front (BDUF) and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).
I received a couple of remarks and questions from Henrik Ebbeskog on this (see below). With this blog I try to answer his question.
Some great remarks Henrik. Thank you! It would take too many posts to answer them, so here’s my answer in one go.
Starting point of my story slicing example was to show how I am using the technique of story slicing. It was my intention to show that stories can be sliced multiple times focusing on the ‘What’ alone. Here already is major difference with a BDUF. That is focusing on the ‘How’. How should the solution be built?
Secondly, BDUF means that the whole solution is ironed out before you start coding. You COULD create a BDUF based on the story as sliced in my example, but you absolutely don’t have to do this. You could also choose to create an initial design or initial design per slice and do rest of designing while coding or even skip designing at all before starting to code.
I assume you mainly are concerned by the fact that this story slicing is also involving a lot of thinking upfront and as such it mimics the approach of a BDUF. As stated in the blog ‘User story slicing — What for?’ you don’t have to slice the full thing. In my Online Banking example I only slides the mortgage part. You might argue that this was overdone. I think it is not that bad. The stories and epics are not super-huge at all. Also, this example shows the result after a slicing exercise. Stories can be added, changed, removed if required without any problem. This makes it entirely different from a BDUF mindset, which basically forces you into a certain direction.
Regarding the final point you make, talking about the lowest level, I see it differently again. Sometimes it doesn’t suffice to discuss stories on a relatively high level. It might be that it is vital that there is an understanding on the type of fields to be displayed or on the way to handle exceptions. In that case you should slice up and until that level.
Once again I wish to make clear that I created the Story Slicing example mainly to show how I do the slicing. It is very much debatable whether or not I oversliced. That being said: opposite to the BDUF exercise, which can take weeks or months to complete, this story slicing exercise is only taking a few hours. That is a major factor to consider.
Originally published at ageling.wordpress.com on January 30, 2017.