Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Vertically Sliced Stories

Vertically sliced user stories (vertical stories) are another critical tool to delivering working software every iteration. After I learned about and tried user stories, I was hooked. But it took me a while to realize the full value of user stories. It wasn’t until I caught on to vertically sliced user stories that their value really became apparent. Vertical stories deliver a very thin slice of functionality that requires code that works across a product’s architecture stack. Completing such a story in an iteration requires that the team deliver incremental functionality.

Teams used to a waterfall style of developing are less comfortable with vertical stories because this mechanism forces them to integrate different ...