slicing-elephant-carpaccio

Slices a single feature or story into ultra-thin vertical increments (minutes-to-hours each) using Alistair Cockburn's Elephant Carpaccio methodology. Use during implementation planning when one story or feature is too large to build in a session and you need demoable increments across layers. Produces an ordered backlog of 10-20 thin slices, each independently working, testable, and demoable. NOT for splitting an epic into sprint-sized stories (see decomposing-epics).

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Last source activity: June 23, 2026 at 22:04
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name	slicing-elephant-carpaccio
description	Slices a single feature or story into ultra-thin vertical increments (minutes-to-hours each) using Alistair Cockburn's Elephant Carpaccio methodology. Use during implementation planning when one story or feature is too large to build in a session and you need demoable increments across layers. Produces an ordered backlog of 10-20 thin slices, each independently working, testable, and demoable. NOT for splitting an epic into sprint-sized stories (see decomposing-epics).
allowed-tools	["Read","Glob","Grep","Task"]

Slicing Elephant Carpaccio

Objective

Break features into the thinnest possible vertical slices — each one cutting across all necessary layers (UI, logic, data) to produce an independently working, testable, demoable increment. Slicing decisions are based on the business situation, not the technology. The output is an ordered slice backlog, not implementation.

When to Use

Planning the implementation of a single feature or story that spans multiple layers or components
Breaking one already-scoped story or feature into demoable increments you can build in a session each
User asks to "slice", "thin-slice", or "carpaccio" a feature
A single story is too large to build in one session (to split an epic into stories, use decomposing-epics first)

Workflow

Understand Behavior Scope  -->  Produce Slice Backlog
What users see/do today        Ordered thin slices

Step 1: Understand the Behavior Scope

If the caller has already supplied behavior context (a wrapping command, a prior research artifact), confirm the supplied scope and skip ahead to Step 2. Otherwise, read the feature description and any linked product documentation (PRDs, READMEs, ADRs about user-facing capabilities). Establish:

Heuristic	Strategy
By workflow path	One user flow end-to-end before the next
By data variation	Start with one data type or category, add others as separate slices
By business rule	Simplest rule first, add complexity in later slices
By interface	One platform, device, or UI variant first
Simple before complex	Happy path across all paths before edge cases on any single path
Hardcode then generalize	Hardcode a value in an early slice; replace with dynamic logic in a later slice. When the later slice references the earlier one, name it by title in quotes (see Cross-Slice References).

Anti-Pattern	Why It's Wrong
Horizontal slices	Backend-only or frontend-only chunks deliver no user-visible value until a later slice integrates them
Slicing by technical layer or service boundary	"All endpoints, then all UI" is horizontal slicing in disguise. Slice on business value, not architecture.
Gold-plating early slices	Adding validation/error handling/polish to slice 2 when core paths in slices 8-12 don't exist yet
Speculative infrastructure	Abstractions or frameworks beyond what the current slice requires
Task decomposition as slices	"Set up the database" and "write the migration" are tasks within a slice, not slices themselves — each slice must have user-visible value
Cross-referencing by number or "slice N"	Number references break when slices reorder, split, or combine, and lose all meaning when an individual slice propagates downstream as a standalone Jira/Linear story (where sibling numbering and the term "slice" are absent). Reference other slices by their title in quotes — see Cross-Slice References.

## Slice Backlog: [Feature Name]

1. **Walking skeleton** — [thinnest end-to-end path].
   Value: Proves the path connects end-to-end.

2. **[Slice name]** — [one-line description of what changes].
   Value: [what a stakeholder can now see or do].

3. ...