The art of slicing work: how to navigate unpredictable projects by Anton Skornyakov
Who should read this book?
Anyone involved in project management or developing products will find this book invaluable. It’s not solely for project managers or innovators. Team leaders and senior managers will also greatly benefit from its insights. These leaders are often at the forefront of transforming how their teams operate and how they engage with customers. The book offers straightforward, practical advice on how to implement these changes effectively.
Why You Should Read This Book
“The Art of Slicing Work” is celebrated for its easy readability and accessibility. You can comfortably finish it in just a few hours, thanks to its succinct 190 pages and generous line spacing. What truly sets this book apart is its exceptional approach to avoiding the dense jargon that often overshadows similar texts. Instead, it shines with clear, lively analogies—imagine the simplicity and enjoyment of preparing a dinner for friends, now applied to project management!
Moreover, the book provides examples from three different businesses, demonstrating how its concepts are applied in real-world scenarios. This practical illustration helps clarify the strategies discussed.
At its heart, the book explores various methods for dividing work into manageable segments, which enables quicker feedback, enhances adaptability, boosts motivation, and fosters autonomy within teams. For those familiar with agile methodologies, this book acts as a valuable refresher, intertwining these important concepts in new, insightful ways. It excels in elucidating foundational ideas and deepens the reader’s comprehension of effective project management under high uncertainty.
While the book does an excellent job in explaining these concepts, I was left with some unmet expectations: I had hoped for strategies addressing the really big challenges, such as improving rheology in a production process with natural raw materials or phasing out a mainframe application.
Nevertheless, “The Art of Slicing Work” is a highly recommended, quick, and enlightening read.
Interesting extracts
“There are 2 different lists you could make to organize the work that you’ve got to do. The first would be simply itemize the individual dishes or components of a dish that can be tasted. (Appetizer: Guacamole & Hummus; Dinner: Burgers with oven-roasted potatoes, …) The other would include everything you need to do to make the items on your menu:
- Slice avocados
- Halve limes
- Chop cilantro
- …
(…) The first is the macro view of the dinner party. The second one is a micro view of the party, showing the actual steps you need to take to prepare the dinner. (…) The vertical list is what you trim to reduce scope.”
“While work can always be sliced vertically and horizontally, whom you delegate the work to will determine which slice you give them, and it will affect how you ensure quality.
The more skilled a person is, the more likely you’ll assign them a vertical slice because you have a higher level of trust in them. Instead of constantly micromanaging their cooking, you check the quality of their work when the whole dish is done by tasting it, like a dinner guest.
On the other hand, less-experienced individuals should be assigned horizontal slices, which are closely monitored by others. It’s important to note that those responsible for monitoring must be experts in the assigned tasks themselves, so they can effectively guide and course-correct the individuals they oversee along the way.”
“Optimizing for efficiency minimizes the effort and resources needed to achieve a fixed goal.
Optimizing for effectiveness maximizes the impact achieved with a fixed amount of resources.”
“The outcome is the measure by which we’ll judge our results. For instance, once everyone has moved tables and chairs, how freely can they move around the room?
We need an action (horizontal slice) to get an output (vertical slice) that could lead to the outcome we hope to achieve.”
“Susan, our quality control manager at Bread & More, wants to unravel the mystery of why her company’s croissant quality has gone flat. In the past, she’s worked on projects where problems became evident only after the project was rolled out far too late to make any changes-so she intends to tackle this mystery in a more pragmatic fashion. By slicing the project vertically.
Susan calls a meeting and invites a cross section of people to attend, all of whom are involved in the croissant- making process: a representative from the commissary where the croissants are formed, frozen, and boxed for shipment; someone from the refrigerated truck company; the company’s top bakers; several store managers; and even some hourly employees. After explaining the project’s goal-to determine why croissant quality has nose-dived and fix it-she asks the group to imagine what could’ve gotten offtrack, from the beginning of the process to the final, baked product. They identify dozens of possibilities, including the temperature of the trucks; delivery time of the frozen product; the ovens, which differ from one store to the next; and the display cases, some of which are closed and some of which are open air. (…) After two weeks, they determine the problem isn’t the ovens at all. (…) Who would have thought that their main assumption was incorrect, that employees would change the prescribed process to bake better pastries?
Since their first vertical slice got negative feedback, Susan and her team look at the next likely culprit and soon discover the inconsistency. (…) This second vertical slice quickly results in positive feedback from customers, which leads to a speedy approval from top management to deliver their next vertical slices: closed displays for croissants in all branches. Even more significantly, they are able to make the change right away.”
“When an organization requires the kind of collaboration that Jenny and her team adopted, the old model for hiring needs to change. No longer are individuals hired solely for one particular role, but for the skills that they bring to the company and their willingness to be part of a truly cross-functional team. They need to be open to sharing expertise and working together toward a common goal.
In other words, hiring for a team that practices vertical slicing requires a different set of expectations. A different way of working. However, you don’t need to change all the human resources processes to leverage the power of cross-functional teamwork. In most organizations, there already are lots of employees who long to have more impact.
When you begin your first vertical slicing initiatives, these people will typically volunteer. Once these initiatives show positive results, they pave the way for more people in the organization to rethink their ways of working, including processes for hiring and promoting.”
“There are 4 key areas of unpredictability
- Humans
- Competition
- Technological development
- Outside factors”
“Imagine a different process. First, there’s a remote prototype with just one button: to turn the TV on and off. Testers no longer have to get up and down to control the power, but they still have to change channels with a dial. The next iteration: a remote with three buttons, one to turn it on/off and the other to change channels. After receiving more tester feedback, two more buttons are added, for increasing or decreasing volume.
Like me, most testers would be satisfied with this simple, easy-to-navigate, five-button remote. If the remote manufacturer stopped there, instead of adding twenty-five or so other buttons, imagine all the time and money they could save on production. Imagine how much less frustration users would have, since they wouldn’t have to figure out what a ton of other buttons are for. (…) If you’re responsible for horizontally slicing the production of television remotes, your only focus will be on getting them designed, manufactured, boxed, and shipped on time and within budget. In contrast, if you’re slicing the work vertically, you’ll ask yourself: Is this button necessary? Where is the best place to put the on/off button? Where should the one for channels go?
Horizontally sliced work is output-focused; it’s about speed and efficiency. Vertically sliced work is about value. How can we deliver this product with greater impact? What increases customer satisfaction and retention and reduces complaints?”
“Different slicing strategies
- Focus on a segment of a group first
- Start with a partial outcome: E.g. Jenny reduced the outcome from a formal agreement to an indication of interest by booking an appointment with the management team
- Try simpler means: E.g. Communication guide → One page flyer
- Use prototypes to prove the outcome is achievable”