Horizontal Slicing
Work is organized by technical layer (“build the API,” “update the schema”) rather than by independently deliverable behavior. Nothing ships until all the pieces are assembled.
Team Workflow
Anti-patterns in how teams assign, coordinate, and manage the flow of work.
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These anti-patterns affect how work moves through the team. They create bottlenecks, hide problems, and prevent the steady flow of small changes that continuous delivery requires.
Monolithic Work Items
Work items go from product request to developer without being broken into smaller pieces. Items are as large as the feature they describe.
Unbounded WIP
The team has no constraint on how many items can be in progress at once. Work accumulates because there is nothing to stop starting and force finishing.
Knowledge Silos
Only specific individuals can work on or review certain parts of the codebase. The team’s capacity is constrained by who knows what.
Big-Bang Feature Delivery
Features are designed and built as large monolithic units with no incremental delivery - either the whole feature ships or nothing does.
Undone Work
Work is marked complete before it is truly done. Hidden steps remain after the story is closed, including testing, validation, or deployment that someone else must finish.
Push-Based Work Assignment
Work is assigned to individuals by a manager or lead instead of team members pulling the next highest-priority item.