Agile with Mum: Vertical Slice

Mum, sorry to say that you have been cleaning your house all wrong. Let me explain what we have learnt when we develop software....

Most people (you included) will set about tidying a room at a time, often starting with the wrong rooms. The problem is that if someone turns up before you have finished the rooms they will go into, it just looks like you have a untidy house.

Further than that, what are they coming around for? Very few people will come around that will need to go into every room in your house.

If they are just coming for afternoon tea, what will they experience in your house? Probably the hall, one other room, maybe the kitchen and possibly the bathroom. They will probably not open cupboards or closets but will definitely come into contact with a tea cup, sugar, milk (I know you go all out with your tea set) and a plate for biscuits.

If I were strapped for time, I could combine this with Story Mapping to reveal what the minimum amount of tidying might be. If you are short of time, this allows you to focus your efforts on what is absolutely required.

Since we know the customer is going to require tea, we sort that out first. We make sure it's all clean and we have all the ingredients for tea (don't know about you but we always seem to be low on milk). Since this is the focus of the visit, it's the most important part of your guests visit. You can always cover, with "Sooo sorry about the mess, the grand kids have just left...." or similar if they arrive early and you have not finished the cleaning.

Next we nail the basics - put away stuff that makes the place look untidy. Yes, this may include moving Dad to another room but the key thing here is not by room but for only the rooms that our customer will need to access. You start from where your guest comes into the house and clean back to where they will spend most of their time, focusing on the what they will do.

Next, we could start to clean the floors, again following the guests movements. We might notice that some things don't quite look right and we just sort those things right away. If they only take few seconds then it's worth doing there and then - we always try to leave a space better than we found it, as long as it makes our guests experience better.

Once you have your basic tea time experience nailed, you can think about those other rooms.

This focused way of thinking is what we would call a vertical slice. At any point, once I complete everything for a vertical slice I an review what is left and decide if I need to do the others or if what I have is good enough.

Agile with Mum: MVP

Working with a range of people, you end up with a growing list of things you steal. One of my favourites is from Helen Meek who often asks people to think of explaining to their Mum. So if we are saying we want a 'simple' interface, we might think of our Mum using it. This means no long words, no technology, no three letter acronymns - you get the picture.

Just recently, I was trying to get across the thinking behind an MVP and eventually imagined this metaphor which I thought I would share. This also covers the basics of Story Mapping and I hope it can be explained in under 5 minutes.

Imagine we are planning our ultimate holiday. This is our once in a lifetime, no expense spared, lifetime-memory-creating sort of holiday. This is important and very expensive and you have decided to plan this a little so that everything goes according to plan and gives you the best possible experience.

You realise there are certain stages to making sure this goes off without a hitch. You start to write them down and you end up with something like this:

Preparation -> Journey Out -> Enjoyment -> Journey Back

Each of these are not just one thing, they are each a series of things you need to do. So you start to list them out. Some of these are really important and some are not - this is the ultimate holiday so you want to remember everything that will make it awesome. We want to remember and think about all the little details.

You write your list of things and then order them so that the most important are at the top and the least important are at the bottom:

Preparation
Check Visa Requirements
Tell neighbours and give spare key
Change Money
Stock up on sun tan lotion
Buy beach books
Buy new swimsuit

Journey Out
Turn off heating
Remember Passport!
Remember Wallet!
Book Taxi
Pack Suitcase
Charge Phone

Enjoyment
Book excursions
Get Trip Advisor Recommendations
Tell Hotel about fish allergy

Journey Back
Book early wake up call for flight
Money for pressies at airport
Charm stewardess for seat upgrade
Book Taxi

You then start to look for your holiday.

The unthinkable then happens. You find the deal of the century. I mean a true "oh my god it can't be true" sort of deal that is totally legit. It's got everything, the ideal location, a superb hotel, all inclusive booze, transfers - the lot. All for a teeny tiny price.

But there's a catch. You have to leave in 15 minutes to get the flight.

Fortunately, you have your plan and you realise that since you have already ordered everything by importance to the ultimate holiday goal, you can use this to work out what you need to do to make that flight.

So you go down each list and stop at something you can leave out - everything above it is a must have. So in Preparation, you stop at "tell neighbours and give spare key" - don't need that, so everything below it must be not required too. In Journey Out, you stop at "Book Taxi" - we are just getting out of here right now so that's not required either. In Enjoyment nothing makes the cut, all that will have to wait until we get there. Journey back doesn't make the cut either since it doesn't effect the minimum we need to go on this holiday.

So what are we left with?

Check Visa requirements
Turn off heating
Remember Passport!
Remember Wallet!

This is the minimum viable product.