Epics are a core component of agile software development. But what exactly are they, and why are they so important? This comprehensive guide will explain everything you need to know about epics in agile.
What is an Epic?
An epic is a large body of work that can be broken down into smaller stories, Epics are used in agile software development to group related stories together and track progress on a bigger goal
An epic can span multiple teams and projects and take multiple sprints to complete. The scope of an epic is flexible and will likely change as the team learns more through development.
Here’s an example of an epic:
Epic: March 2050 Space Tourism Launch
- Story: Update date range to include March 2050 launch dates
- Story: Reduce load time for requested flight listings
- Story: Promote Saturn Summer Sale on confirm page for First Class bookings
This epic contains stories related to a March 2050 space tourism launch. The stories are smaller units of work that allow the team to make progress on the broader launch epic.
The key attributes of an agile epic are:
- Large body of work
- Broken into smaller stories
- Spans multiple sprints
- Scope is flexible
Comparing Epics, Themes, and Stories
To understand epics, it helps to see where they fit into the agile project hierarchy:
- Theme – A high-level, strategic objective
- Epic – A large body of work that supports the theme
- Story – A small unit of work that makes up the epic
For example:
Theme: Improve customer engagement
Epic: Build a mobile app
Stories:
- Create app UI designs
- Develop home page
- Add account registration
- Build settings page
Themes are high-level goals like “improve customer engagement.” Epics support the theme by breaking it into a large body of work like “build a mobile app.” Stories break the epic down into small shippable units like “develop home page.”
Why are Epics Important?
There are several key reasons why epics are an important agile practice:
1. Organize Large Bodies of Work
Epics allow teams to break large initiatives down into smaller, more manageable chunks. This makes big projects feel less daunting and helps teams maintain focus.
2. Track Progress on Strategic Goals
Epics provide a way to group related stories so teams can track progress on larger business objectives and themes. Without epics, it would be difficult to connect day-to-day development work back to strategic goals.
3. Maintain Focus on the Big Picture
When teams get bogged down in individual stories, epics help them remember they are working towards a bigger vision. Epics keep teams connected to strategic objectives.
4. Provide Flexibility
The scope of an epic can change over time as the team learns more. This flexibility is key for agile development. Strict plans often fail, but epics provide just enough structure while allowing room for discoveries.
5. Facilitate Estimation
Teams can estimate epics in story points by adding up estimates of its stories. This allows product managers to forecast release plans.
Creating Effective Epics
When creating epics, focus on defining a body of work that supports a larger strategic goal. Here are some tips:
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Align epics to company objectives – Make sure each epic ties directly back to a strategic theme or objective. This helps maintain focus.
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Keep epics small enough to plan – Epics should be able to be completed over multiple sprints, but not span many months or quarters. Keep epics under 3 months as a guideline.
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Define success criteria – Specify what success looks like for each epic. These criteria can evolve over time as you learn more.
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Make epics independent – Try to define epics that can stand alone and aren’t dependent on other epics. This makes planning easier.
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Consider team structure – Make epics owned by a single team whenever possible. Avoid epics that require tight coordination across multiple teams.
Following these tips will help you define epics that set your teams up for success.
Breaking Epics Down Into Stories
Once you’ve defined an epic, the next step is breaking it down into smaller stories. Here are some approaches for splitting epics into stories:
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By user persona – Create one story for each user persona (e.g. basic user, power user, administrator).
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By component – Define stories around technical components (e.g. database, API, frontend).
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By process step – Break the epic down into logical steps required to complete it.
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By feature – Identify specific features and functionality needed. Define each as its own story.
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Vertical slice – Split an epic into thin vertical slices that span components. Avoid pure component teams.
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Meetings with the team – Hold structured meetings like Three Amigos to collectively define stories.
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Start high-level – Begin with higher-level stories and elaborate details later. Avoid over-planning upfront.
There is no one right way to break down epics. Leverage a combination of techniques as needed for each epic. Involve designers, developers, testers and other disciplines in story splitting.
Tracking Epic Progress
Once your team gets to work on an epic’s stories, tracking progress is key. Here are some tips for tracking epic progress:
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Build an epic kanban board – Visualize all the stories for an epic on a dedicated kanban board. This provides a snapshot of progress.
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Use epic burn down charts – Capture an epic’s remaining work and track how this updates each sprint with a burn down chart.
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Hold regular reviews – At the end of each sprint, review epic progress. Are you on track? Does the scope need adjustment?
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Demo work to stakeholders – Demo completed stories to stakeholders so they see progress being made. Get their feedback.
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Update release plans – If epic timelines change, update your roadmaps and release plans accordingly.
Constantly reviewing and visualizing epic progress helps teams stay aligned to the big picture. Course correct as needed based on learnings and feedback.
Tips for Managing Epics
Here are some additional tips for working with epics:
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Don’t define epics too large. Target epics that take 2-3 sprints.
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Avoid spanning epics across multiple teams. Single-team ownership is best.
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Epics don’t have to align to sprints. Stories can start or continue across sprints.
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The scope of an epic can change. Stakeholder feedback often leads to new stories.
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Try not to start work on another epic until the current one is complete. Limit WIP.
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Add epics to the product roadmap so stakeholders see the big picture plan.
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Use epics as a vehicle for communication and collaboration across the organization.
Epic Best Practices
Pulling together some of the advice covered, here are best practices to keep in mind when working with epics:
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Connect epics to strategy – Link each epic to a strategic theme or objective.
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Split epics iteratively – Break epics into stories at a high level. Elaborate details just-in-time, not upfront.
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Size epics appropriately – Target 2-3 sprints per epic as a guideline.
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Map epics to milestones – Align completed epics to key product milestones and releases.
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Visualize progress – Use kanban boards and burn down charts to visualize epic progress.
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Review regularly – Hold sprint reviews on epic progress. Adjust scope based on learnings.
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Limit WIP – Try to complete epics before starting new ones. Reduce context switching.
Following these best practices will help your teams seamlessly execute epics from strategic vision through tactical implementation.
Common Epic Mistakes to Avoid
It’s also helpful to keep some common anti-patterns in mind as you work with epics:
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Defining epics that are too large and span many months. Size epics for completion within 2-3 sprints.
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Failing to connect epics back to strategic themes. Epics should always map back to a broader objective.
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Starting work on too many epics at once. Limit work-in-progress to complete epics faster.
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Not updating epic scope based on learnings. Allow epics to evolve as new discoveries emerge.
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Trying to complete an entire epic within a single sprint. Epics are designed to span multiple sprints.
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Not reviewing epic progress at the end of each sprint. This misses opportunities for early course correction.
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Letting individual stories shadow the big picture epic goals. Maintain alignment back to epics.
Being aware of these anti-patterns will help teams avoid common struggles in implementing epics.
Ep
What is an Epic in agile?
In Agile product management, epics are used to organize tasks and create hierarchy in the development process. An epic is a large chunk of work that is segmented into smaller tasks, called user stories. An epic often spans across multiple sprints, teams, and even across multiple projects. Product people need to break down epics into stories before they can start creating functionality from them.
User stories within an epic share the same strategic goal and high-level requirements of what the customer wants. Similarly, when several epics share a common business objective, they are grouped together into an even broader body of work, called a theme. As sprints are completed, and understanding of the customer needs increases, the scope of an epic will change, and new user stories will be added or removed to the epic.
Understanding epics within a broader agile framework
Understanding where epics sit in the complete agile structure, allows product teams to make well-informed decisions and continue to work towards a bigger strategic goal.
- The roadmap communicates the product plan and aligns the whole organization around it. The roadmap shows how the product will evolve over time, and usually includes a timeline, feature releases, and goals.
- Themes are long-term strategic objectives with a broader scope. They provide context for decision-making and help navigate the product strategy within the organization. Agile themes sit on top of the work breakdown hierarchy and drive the creation of epics.
- Epics are collections of tasks or user stories. Epics break down development work into shippable components while keeping the daily work connected to the larger theme. Epics are more specific than themes and can be measured so that PMs can observe their contribution to the organization’s overall goal.
- User stories are the smallest piece of work in the agile framework. A user story is a brief explanation of a product feature written from the end user’s perspective that articulates how the user will experience value. Some organizations may classify larger user stories (stories that can’t be delivered within a single sprint) as epics. Alternatively, larger stories could be broken down into sub-tasks.
Let’s say you’re a senior product manager at an online travel agency. In light of current events, bookings of the agency went down with 30%. After a long discussion with senior members from each department and outside stakeholders, the team decided to pivot to compete in the experiences market.
Here is an example of how the agile product team might plan the pivot.
Transition from a traditional accommodation agency to a complete online provider of experiences and activities.
- Launch an online marketplace for experience providers and end-users.
- Create an onboarding program for experience providers.
- Expand the current booking system to support experiences and activities.
- Build a mobile app to attract a younger audience of experienced buyers.
All of these items need to be broken down into multiple smaller stories to be delivered, but they are all related to the same theme.
“Launch a marketplace for experiences” might include stories from building the customer-facing website to tasks aimed at attracting experience providers and end-users to the new marketplace. The epic will be delivered over several sprints and will be executed by members from different teams.
Here’s what stories the product team might plan in order to launch the marketplace:
- Develop the signup process for experience providers. Assigned to the development team.
- Design a single experience view. Assigned to the product design team.
- Reduce loading time in the experience search. Assigned to the IT Operations team.
- Write a launch newsletter. Assigned to the marketing team.
What are Agile Epics, User Stories, and Story Points?
What are stories and epics in agile?
In a sense, stories and epics in agile are similar to stories and epics in film or literature. A story is one simple narrative; a series of related and interdependent stories makes up an epic. The same is true for your work management, where the completion of related stories leads to the completion of an epic.
What is an epic in a work management tool?
An epic is a work management tool. It’s a description of a large, high-level piece of work for your team. Here are a few examples: In a hierarchy of work, an epic comes from a higher-level theme, business goal, or initiative.
What is an epic in Agile & DevOps?
When adopting agile and DevOps, an epic serves to manage tasks. It’s a defined body of work that is segmented into specific tasks (called “stories,” or “user stories”) based on the needs/requests of customers or end-users. Epics are a helpful way to organize your work and to create a hierarchy.
What is an epic in agile development?
As you can see from the definition above, an epic sits between a theme and a story in the agile development strategic hierarchy. A theme represents a team’s high-level strategy for its product. But to translate this strategy into an action plan, the team must take several additional steps.
