Let’s be honest – projects can get messy fast. It’s all too easy to get tangled up in the details and lose sight of the bigger picture. That’s where Agile epics step in, helping you think big while staying grounded in the steps that lead to success. Epics act as the link between your grand strategy and the day-to-day tasks, giving your team the clarity to drive meaningful progress. Whether you’re steering a massive project or managing smaller innovations, mastering epics is key to unlocking the flexibility and focus that Agile promises. In this post, we’ll show you how epics empower teams to think big, act smart, and deliver results.
What is an Epic?
In a hierarchy of work, epics are formed by breaking down higher-level themes or business goals. They are large initiatives that encompass all the development work needed to implement a larger deliverable. An epic is too large to be completed in a single scrum team’s sprint, but it is smaller than the highest-level goals and initiatives. Epics are intentionally broad, light on details, and flexible.
Here’s what that means: The epic is broken down into smaller pieces of work. Your team may call these smaller pieces product backlog items/tickets, user stories, issues, or something else. As conditions or customer requirements change over time, these smaller pieces can be modified, removed, or added to a team’s product backlog with each sprint. In this way, the epic is flexible, providing direction without requiring heavy investment in its plans and details.
Why Are Epics Important?
Instead of tackling the whole epic at once with a deadline in a few months, you and your teammates deliver small increments of value to your customers, users, or stakeholders each sprint. When changes are needed, you adapt the plan easily. Had your team taken on the entire epic at once, they might find that changes have rendered the epic obsolete by the end.
How to Identify Epics?
Agile epics should describe major product requirements or areas of functionality that define the user experience. You can think of them as categories or parents for user stories that may not directly relate to each other but fall under the same umbrella of functionality (e.g. UI Improvements). Epics can become unwieldy quickly, so it’s worth examining them along the following lines to determine if the size is appropriate or not. Remember, the goal is for the epic to be fully delivered!
- Does the epic span products? If so, it may be more appropriate to split the epic along product lines.
- Do the success criteria support each other entirely? If there is conflict between measurements, splitting the epic would be warranted.
- Is the epic for multiple customer segments? Targeting different customer groups is likely to lead to contention between measurement and goals.
- How risky is the epic? An effective mitigation strategy may be to compartmentalize the risk across several epics rather than concentrating it in one.
- Would working on the epic effectively shut down all other development work? This may be an indication that the epic is too large (even if the business priority is clearly highest) and could introduce an extra level of risk that may not have been considered or can be easily mitigated.
Who Creates and Manages Epics?
In Agile, the creation of epics typically starts with the product owner, who has a deep understanding of the project’s long-term vision and business objectives. The product owner identifies major areas of work, shaping them into epics that guide the team’s efforts. While the product owner leads this process, it often involves input from various stakeholders and team members to ensure that each epic aligns with overall project goals. Once established, the product owner is responsible for managing these epics, breaking them down into smaller tasks, and prioritizing them to support effective sprint planning and execution.
How to Craft Effective Epics?
- Define Clear Goals: Begin by identifying the epic’s objectives. Understand the problem it seeks to address and clarify how it will drive value for the project and stakeholders.
- Collaborate for Alignment: Involve key stakeholders—such as team members, users, and business leaders—to ensure the epic is well-rounded and matches user needs and business priorities.
- Maintain Flexibility: Though the epic should offer clear direction, it’s important to leave space for changes as new insights or requirements emerge during development.
- Prioritize Value: Ensure that every aspect of the epic contributes meaningfully to delivering tangible value to both the customer and the overall project.
Epic Structure: Key Components of a Well-Written Epic
- Title: The title should succinctly summarize the core of the epic, giving the team and stakeholders a quick understanding of its focus.
- Overview: Write a concise summary that outlines the epic’s objectives and the value it delivers to both the project and the end-user. Consider the target audience and competitors while framing this.
- Actionable Features: Break the epic down into smaller, actionable features that are measurable and align with the epic’s primary goals. These features should be traceable to specific user needs or project requirements.
- Success Criteria: Clearly define how the success of the epic will be measured. This should go beyond basic acceptance criteria and include broader business outcomes that may evolve over time.
- Dependencies: Identify any interdependencies with other epics, projects, or external factors that could influence the epic’s progress.
- Timeline: While the exact timeframe might not be locked, establishing a rough schedule helps prioritize the work and manage stakeholder expectations.
Next Steps
In conclusion, epics are fundamental to Agile methodology and critical to the Scrum framework. They help product owners and key stakeholders manage and organize the product backlog effectively. Developers can also use epics to plan iterations, breaking them into manageable sprints, and systematically collect customer feedback. As outlined, epics serve as an asset for Agile teams, allowing for the grouping of user stories to aid in prioritization and incremental value delivery.
Effectively creating and managing epics can be challenging without the right approach. If you’re finding it difficult to structure your epics, align them with business goals, or manage their scope within your team, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at Perficient. Our experts can help you refine your process, ensuring that your epics are well-defined, manageable, and strategically aligned with your project’s success.
Contact us today to learn how we can assist your team in mastering Agile epics!
