Elephant Carpaccio

How do you eat an elephant? Bite by bite.

Yes. We know that joke. But what shape should the bites have? I recently came across the term “Elephant Carpaccio” and, of course, had to go down an internet rabbit hole to learn more about it. Not to worry, we’re not serving up an endangered species for consumption. Instead, we’re looking at slicing our work down into manageable tasks in the correct way.

(Feeling a bit technical after all this recent philosophizing :D )

The term refers to an exercise run by Scrum trainers (a great guide is available here ) to teach how a task (or User Story) can be sliced vertically and really, really thin. I find this is both a crucial and very unnatural skill. We’re somehow wired to slice horizontally: Build the backend first, then the frontend, then wire them together. We achieve much better results (fewer defects, less pain in integration) if we slice vertically. That means: Build something with backend and frontend at the same time. And make it a very small feature. The mentioned exercise takes that idea to the extreme. Building out a feature (such as a shopping cart’s calculation of the order total, including tax, discounts, etc) in such small increments that the feature gets built in five slices that take less than ten minutes each.

We can debate the merits of such an extreme and artificial constraint. But given that we’re so hardwired to bite off more than we can chew (whether it’s off a pachyderm, a project, or a user story), forcing ourselves to go far into the opposite direction is an excellent workout for our brains.

This concept should have broader applicability beyond just software development, too. Any artifact you have to create, whether that’s a presentation, a business plan or a design brief, you could ask: Is my default mode of delivery a vertical slice where I slowly build up the layers? Can I shift to horizontal slicing so I deliver more value sooner, in smaller but still functional increments?