Slides from Anton Skornyakov's presentation on Slicing Work. His main claim: The main question to focus on when doing work in unpredictable environments is: "What checkable results are useful on our way to full completion?" This helps with topics such as delegation, ownership, motivation, responsibility, innovation, progress measurement, transparency, adaptability, resilience, ability to change direction of a project, self-organisation etc.

1. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
The Key to Unlocking Business Agility
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2. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
SOME SECONDARY QUESTIONS
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“How can I motivate my developers?”
“Who is responsible for writing user
stories into Jira?”
“How do I get my stakeholder to
respect my decisions?”
“What do really ‘good’ user stories
look like?”
“How to coordinate dependencies
between teams?”

3. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
PRIMARY QUESTION TO FOCUS ON
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What checkable results are useful on our way to full
completion?

4. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
● Architecture design documents,
● Specifications/Requirement
documents,
● Analysis,
● Concepts,
● Documentation of achieved
stakeholder agreements,
● market research summaries
● …
INTERMEDIATE RESULTS TODAY
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Source: https://pixabay.com
The more time we invest into them the less adaptable we
become. (in most cases)

5. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
VERTICAL & HORIZONTAL SLICES
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❏ Greek salad
❏ Caprese salad
❏ Pickled olives
❏ Baguette
❏ Falafel &
Hummus
❏ Burgers (with
meat)
Vertical slices – (tastable) things
❏ Fried potatoes
❏ Burgers (vegan)
❏ Eggplant paste
❏ Roast duck
❏ Tiramisu
❏ …
❏ Wash the lettuce
❏ Cut the feta
❏ Wash tomatoes
❏ Cut the
tomatoes
❏ Preheat oven
❏ Wash the duck
❏ Season duck
Horizontal slices - actions needed
❏ Peeling potatoes
❏ Cutting potatoes
❏ Soak the falafel
❏ Peel 2 onions
❏ Squeeze ½ lemon
❏ Shape falafel
❏ Fry the falafel
❏ …
Image Source: https://pixabay.com
Scenario: Expecting ~20 guests for a dinner,
you plan and manage cooking for them.

6. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
OVERVIEW AND PRIORITIZATION
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Question 1: What list provides you with an overview?
Question 2: What list allows you to reduce / increase
the scope?

7. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
OPTIMIZING FOR EFFICIENCY?
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Question 3: What list allows you to optimize the
amount of time and effort needed to cook a fixed meal?
Image Source: https://pixabay.com
Optimizing for efficiency automatically compromises
adaptability

8. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
DELEGATING WHAT TO WHOM
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Question 4 A: Items from which list would you delegate
to an expert cook?
Question 4 B: And items from which list would you
delegate to your kids 8 + 10 who help you out?
Image Source: https://pixabay.com

9. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
MICRO-MANAGEMENT TRAP
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10. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
DELEGATING VERTICAL SLICES
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11. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
STRUCTURE CHANGES CULTURE
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Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:12th_CAB_Mission_Complete_Race_was_a_%27splash%27_hit_130503-D-OE523-645.jpg

12. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
MEASURING PROGRESS
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Question 5: Imagine you cook a dish for the first time
with a recipe. You’ve checked off 8 of 10 individual
steps of the recipe (horizontal slices). Does this
represent sure progress?
And what if you’ve done this recipe 10 times before?
Image Source: https://pixabay.com

13. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
MEASURING PROGRESS
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Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VirtualBox_Windows_Chicago_11_11_2023_10_36_19_progress_bar.png

14. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
BENEFITS VERTICAL SLICING
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Benefits of knowing many small slices (a.k.a.
checkable results)
1. Overview of your endeavor
2. Ability to prioritize and change scope
3. Ownership and responsibility of the people doing the
work
4. Reliable progress for powerful stakeholders

15. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
HOW TO SLICE IN SOFTWARE?
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Image Source: openai.com
Walking Skeleton, term coined by Alistair Cockburn :
http://alistair.cockburn.us/index.php/Walking_skeleton
Walking Skeleton Cheat Sheets
Splitting Cheat Sheets, most famously here:
https://www.humanizingwork.com/the-humanizing-
work-guide-to-splitting-user-stories/
Elephant Carpaccio
Elephant Carpaccio, exercise developed by Alistair
Cockburn and popularized by Henrik Kniberg:
https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1TCuuu-8Mm1
4oxsOnlk8DqfZAA1cvtYu9WGv67Yj_sSk/pub
However, most of our projects are ultimately not about
software.

16. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
Slicing Patterns used here:
● Reduce initial target group
● “Do Things that Don’t Scale”*
PROJECT: CHANGING PROCESSES IN A PUBLIC AGENCY
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Adapting processes in a government
institution – housing refugees
This story is fictional. However it is based on coaching experience with multiple different clients.
* - term coined by Paul Graham http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

17. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
4. Prioritize: Identify the most
significant risks / unknowns
5. Ideate: What results would prove
the risks don’t happen or resolve
the unknown
SIMPLIFIED SCRIPT
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1. Get as many useful perspectives
into a room as possible
2. Immerse yourselves into the
endeavour
3. Imagine this project failed:
What are risks and unknowns
surface?
6. Reduce: If too big to build within a
couple of weeks. What smaller
result could still reduce risk?
DO
INSPECT
ADAPT

18. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
BECOME AN ARTIST BY PRACTICING THE CRAFT
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Image Source: https://pixabay.com

19. Anton Skornyakov | https://slicingwork.com
DIVE DEEPER WITH THE BOOK
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Available from 21st March
2024!
https://slicingwork.com
Anton Skornyakov, CST®,
MBA, Dipl. Phys.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonskornyakov/
Co-Founder and Managing
Director at Agile.Coach