There are many ways to decompose a large task into smaller portions. When agilist start doing this there are a few general ways to do such a thing. Let's start by distinguishing between a story split and a story slice. Splitting != Slicing If you've spent some time with an ax and a pile of wood then you understand that many logs have a naturally easier way to split along with the grain direction. It requires much less energy to split a log than it does to slice the log. If you've spent some time baking cakes you know that people like to slice cake. You never hear of a person wanting a split of the cake. Many cakes have multiple layers, sometimes with different flavors in each layer. What does this have to do with software development stories? Well many software systems have layers, and it turns out that it is easy to split the layers apart. For example: the UI layer is easy to separate from the Persistence layer. Many organizations...