Feedback is a lot like a Swiss Army knife. It is a tool that can improve or fix almost anything, but its effectiveness depends on how the work is sliced, which determines who can give the feedback and what criteria their feedback will be based on.
- An outsider can provide feedback on a vertical slice, without understanding how it was made. This outsider might be a customer, end user, or stakeholder.
- Only an expert who knows how a particular task needs to be performed can give feedback on the result of a horizontal slice.
Feedback on a vertical slice is more holistic and allows for greater creativity. This permission to experiment promotes ownership and a desire for continuous improvement of the result. On the other hand, feedback on horizontal slices improves the craft associated with that specific task. In either case, the benefit of feedback is quite simple: whatever gets feedback gets improved.
External and internal learning
As I’ve learned from my projects, both internal and external learning can also occur when we get feedback on vertical slices, and both have the potential to improve productivity.
- External learning is the process of understanding which factors impact the target outcome of your project. It shows us which slices are impactful and which are not.
- Internal learning occurs when a process or project changes or adapts something. It also occurs when you and your team learn to work better together. You shouldn’t underestimate the boost in productivity that comes from internal learning.
Teams work faster when they share feedback right away. When feedback comes too late, they tend not to learn. The information doesn’t stick. Imagine learning to play the guitar and having to wait fifteen minutes to hear the sound of the strings that you strummed. How well would you know? Fifteen seconds later is hard enough. Fifteen minutes? No way.
How quickly feedback comes plays a vital role in learning. With immediate feedback, we can still remember our decisions and identify what we need to change to improve. In organizations, there are often meetings that highlight lessons learned several months after a project is complete. But to learn in business or with a project, the feedback has to be immediate. The speed makes all the difference.
This is where vertical slicing plays a key role. If the next vertical slice—something a stakeholder can give feedback on—takes months to complete, you’ll have to wait months to learn and adapt. But if you manage to divide your projects into vertical slices that can be accomplished in a week or two, your learning—and in turn, your projects—will start to accelerate.
Not long ago, technology was a vague, out-of-reach concept to most of us. Biologically, we’re not that different from our hunter-gatherer ancestors, and yet today, almost everyone has a smartphone and can easily adapt to new operating systems.
Adapting to change
Just as we adapt to rapidly changing technology, we adapt to changes in every aspect of our lives. When your favorite restaurant closes, or you move to a new place, it may take a little time to adjust, but eventually, you embrace the new situation and find benefits instead of only downsides.
As humans, we’re all about cognitive adaptability, and feedback is a powerful catalyst for that process. You receive feedback whenever you notice something different from what you expected, and you change and grow as a result. You get better at whatever you’re doing, whether baking croissants or playing guitar. Feedback is essential because, without it, no learning can occur.
Because we adapt only in response to feedback, what we pay attention to matters. That’s why how our work is sliced makes a big difference in what we learn.
In an environment where we receive feedback only on how well a particular activity was done, we improve the skill related only to that activity. In contrast, in an environment where we receive feedback on projects, we naturally learn and adapt in various areas. This is why vertically slicing work is key to helping individuals and teams grow holistically—not just as specialists.
Productivity tripled with my textbook project because I received feedback on how to work better to serve the result, which, in this case, was the delivery of a consistent and complete index for all the textbooks. Because the team members weren’t limited in their roles and always had the end goal of one complete book in mind, they were able to adapt and work within a system that required more from them instead of less.
Conclusion
This concept may sound counterintuitive if you believe that specialized work increases productivity. However, if you enable people to get feedback, focus on the whole project, and do more, most will rise to the challenge. They’ll work faster, and the result will be greatly improved.
Setting up a vertical system where feedback is a built-in part of the process allows individuals and teams to identify potential problems early on and work strategically to find solutions. You won’t eliminate unpredictability, but you’ll have better tools to deal with it when it comes along.
