Incremental Development with Elephant Carpaccio

How to slice initiatives into small, valuable increments for maximum business impact

Modern organisations want faster feedback, lower risk, and earlier business value — yet many initiatives are still delivered too late, too big, and with too little learning along the way.

Incremental development addresses this problem directly. Instead of building “everything at once”, work is sliced into very small, meaningful growth stages that deliver value early, create learning opportunities, and allow teams to pivot based on real feedback.

In this intense and highly interactive half-day workshop, Dr. Alistair Cockburn uses the infamous "Elephant Carpaccio" exercise to show how to finely slice initiatives and systems for maximum business effect in the shortest possible time. Participants experience why early and staged delivery works, how to design increments that matter, and how this approach fundamentally changes decision-making, risk, and outcomes.

The workshop is held from a business perspective, with attendees using either spreadsheets or programming to implement the assignment. Discussing slicing from a business perspective makes it equally relevant for business and technical roles working together.

The learning is visceral. Business people and programmers alike leave the workshop with a new appreciation for the value of fine-grained development — and with practical skills they can apply immediately in their own context.

Besides all other reasons to work in fine-grained increments, we are learning that the way to keep AI and LLMs in check is by guiding them with very fine-grained incremental development.

Who is this training for?

This workshop is relevant for all roles and all levels: Executives and business leaders learn why to work in small phases and deliveries, Business stakeholders learn to guide initiatives and investments, Programmers and technical specialists learn to reduce risk by programming in even smaller stages. The impact is strongest when business and technical people attend and do the exercises together.

What will you learn in this training?

• how early and staged releases create measurable business benefits
• why very early releases and internal demos are critical for learning and risk reduction
• how large batches increase risk and delay learning
• how to build systems and initiatives incrementally, step by step
• how to slice work into very small, value-focused increments
• how incremental development supports better decision-making
• how to design and explain incremental growth stages for real initiatives
• how to explain the value of early and regular delivery to colleagues
• how incremental thinking applies to product, marketing, and technical initiatives
• how to apply incremental thinking immediately in your own work context

This morning session is for business people, executives, and programmers alike. In fact, the best learning is when there is a mix of specialties working together. For programmers, consider joining this session with the afternoon session on Hexagonal Architecture (see the links below). 

Register for just the morning (non-programmers).

Register for the full-day!

Bio of the instructor:

Dr. Alistair Cockburn (pronounced CO-BURN) was named as one of the “42 Greatest Software Professionals of All Times“ in 2020, as a world expert on methodologies, project management, software architecture, use cases and agile development. He co-authored both the Agile Manifesto and the Project Management Declaration of Inter-dependence. Since 2015 he has been working on expanding agile to cover every kind of initiative, including social impact project, governments, and families.

Alistair's "Hexagonal Tour", May 2026

• Århus DK, May 13: Half-day Elephant Carpaccio, Full-day Hexagonal Architecture
• Vienna, May 18: Half-day Elephant Carpaccio, Full-day Hexagonal Architecture
• Vienna, May 21-22: Two-day Heart of Agile
• Utrecht NL, May 29: Half-day Elephant Carpaccio, Full-day Hexagonal Architecture
• The full tour content