Agile Glossary 101: Epics

What is an Epic?

An Epic is a large body of work that can be broken down into multiple smaller stories or tasks. It’s typically focused on a specific business or technical challenge and captures the overall intent of a project. As a result, epics often span multiple teams, products, and projects.

Within this larger Epic, there are smaller stories that help to define the overall user flow. These individual stories can be assigned to specific teams or developers and will track the project’s progress.

Why are Epics Used?

Epics are often used in Agile development to break high-level objectives into smaller stories and tasks. They’re also a great way to keep track of progress, as individual stories can be tracked for completion.

For example, if you’re a software company working on two-week sprints and you take on integration between your product and a third-party application, it will likely take more than a single sprint to complete. This is where you can use epics — large groups of user stories that span multiple iterations or releases.

Epics are also helpful for teams working on projects with multiple stakeholders. By breaking down the project into smaller stories, it’s easier to track progress and prioritize tasks.

Benefits of Using Epics Framework

Using an Epic framework can help a project move forward quickly and efficiently. It allows teams to break down complex projects into smaller tasks and helps keep everyone on the same page. Epics also help in performance monitoring and timeline estimates.

In addition, Epics can help teams prioritize tasks by comparing the effort and impact of different stories. Teams can rank epics by urgency and importance on a product roadmap to help prioritize tasks. This ensures that the most important projects are completed first. Epics help the team stay focused and organized and ensure the product is headed in the right direction.