Epic

What is an epic in Agile?

An epic is a large body of work that can be broken down into smaller elements, namely user stories and tasks. It is the top level of a hierarchy used in Agile product development, to help articulate the aims of a particular piece of work and break down the work required to achieve that. 

In the Agile product development methodology, epics aren’t just about grouping a load of tasks together under a heading. They represent significant, overarching goals that align with the strategic direction of the product, and the related work can often involve multiple cross-functional teams.

Epics are inherently broad, often spanning multiple sprints, and sometimes, they stretch across several teams and projects. This breadth is intentional, as it allows you to maintain a high-level view of your objectives while ensuring that every piece of work contributes meaningfully to the larger goal it’s linked to.

Epics work as an important link between the grand vision and the granular, day-to-day tasks that drive your product forward. By organizing work into epics, you can ensure that their efforts are both aligned with business objectives and organized in a way that promotes more efficient and effective work.

Flexibility and Feedback

One of the main points of epics is that they are inherently flexible. Unlike traditional product management approaches that rigidly stick to predefined plans and timelines, Agile epics thrive on adaptability.

As development progresses, you should be continuously learning from customer feedback, and adding, removing, or modifying the user stories within an epic as your knowledge grows. This adaptability helps to ensure that the product evolves in a manner that truly meets the needs of the customers while also accommodating changes in the project landscape.

Epic vs user story vs task

In Agile product management, it’s very helpful to understand the difference between epics, user stories, and tasks, as each plays a unique role in driving the development process. 

The relationship between epics, user stories, and tasks is hierarchical. An epic provides the big picture, outlining a significant goal. User stories break down that goal into smaller, value-driven features that are relevant to the user. Tasks then detail the specific work needed to develop those features. 

This hierarchy helps Agile teams maintain a clear focus on the objective, ensures that work is organized and manageable, and facilitates tracking and reporting on progress.

Epics: The broad strokes

• Definition: An epic is a large body of work that encapsulates a significant goal or objectivet. It’s broad and often spans multiple sprints or iterations.
• Purpose: Epics serve to align the team’s work with the larger, strategic goals of the product.. They provide a high-level view of the work to be done, helping to ensure that all efforts are directed towards achieving overarching objectives.
• Scope: Due to their size, epics are broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces – typically user stories – that can be completed within the Agile framework’s iterative cycles.

User stories: The building blocks

• Definition: A user story is a short, simple description of a feature from the perspective of the end-user or customer. It focuses on the value or outcome that the user will receive.
• Purpose: User stories help to ensure that the development work is focused on the needs and values of the user. They make the work more manageable for teams and provide a clearer understanding of what needs to be done.
• Scope: Each user story is a small, actionable requirement that can be completed within a single sprint. User stories are derived from epics and contribute directly to achieving the larger goals outlined in the epic.

Tasks: The nitty-gritty

• Definition: A Task is the smallest unit of work in the Agile process. It represents a specific action or piece of work that needs to be completed to achieve a user story.
• Purpose: Tasks provide a detailed, actionable plan for how to accomplish a user story. They help break down the work into even smaller components that can be easily managed and tracked by the team.
• Scope: Tasks are highly specific and focused, often requiring only a few hours to a few days to complete. They are the steps that need to be taken to deliver on the promise of a user story and, by extension, the epic.

Understanding the distinctions and connections between epics, user stories, and tasks allows your teams to approach large, complex initiatives with a structure that is both flexible and focused, ensuring that every piece of work they do contributes to the product’s success.

How do you use epics in Agile?

In Agile development, each epic acts as a guiding beacon that you can use to focus your work toward achieving high-level goals. It involves strategically breaking down the work, effective prioritization, and iterative learning.

Here’s how epics can be used effectively in Agile product management:

Breaking down the work into manageable chunks

The first step in using epics effectively is breaking down large, strategic goals into smaller, actionable tasks (user stories). This decomposition lets you translate lofty objectives into specific, deliverable features or improvements. This in turn helps your teams to focus on immediate, achievable tasks while staying aligned with the broader goals the epic represents.

Aligning with business objectives

One of the main functions of an epic is to ensure that every piece of work your teams undertake contributes to the product’s overarching goals. Proper alignment is crucial for maintaining focus and ensuring that your resources are efficiently allocated to the tasks that provide the most significant value to both the business and your users.

Prioritization

Prioritization is key to ensuring that the most critical tasks are addressed promptly and efficiently. ProdPad’s Now-Next-Later roadmap format is particularly useful for this purpose. It enables teams to categorize their work into immediate priorities (Now), upcoming work (Next), and future objectives (Later). This prioritization helps teams navigate the complexities of product development, ensuring that they are always working on what matters most.

Iterative development and continuous feedback

Implementing an iterative development process is a core principle of Agile, where products are developed, tested, and improved in repeated cycles. Epics enable this process by allowing for a flexible scope that you can adjust based on continuous feedback from your users and stakeholders. As your teams learn more about user needs and product requirements, they can add or remove user stories from each epic, ensuring that the product keeps evolving in a direction that maximizes value you’re providing to your users.

What is an example of an Agile epic?

Let’s explore an example that illustrates the practical application of an epic in an Agile setting:

Imagine a tech company aiming to enhance the user experience of its mobile application to increase user engagement and retention rates. This objective can be encapsulated in an epic titled “Enhance mobile app user experience.”

Breakdown of the epic

User stories: This epic can be divided into several user stories, each focusing on specific features or improvements. For instance:

• As a user, I want the app to load 30% faster, so that I can access features more quickly.
• As a user, I want an intuitive user interface, so that I can navigate the app more easily.
• As a user, I want personalized content recommendations, so that I find the content more engaging.

Prioritization: You would now  prioritize these user stories. Immediate priorities might include optimizing app performance for quicker loading times. Upcoming tasks could involve redesigning the user interface for better navigation, while future objectives may focus on developing a personalized content recommendation system.

Iterative development and feedback: Each user story within the epic undergoes iterative development, with continuous testing and feedback loops. This process ensures that improvements are aligned with user expectations and contribute effectively to the overarching goal of enhancing the app’s user experience.

Outcome: The successful completion of all user stories within this epic would lead to a more engaging and user-friendly mobile application, ultimately achieving the goal of increased user engagement and retention.

By breaking down the epic into manageable user stories and prioritizing these tasks with tools like ProdPad, teams can navigate the complexities of product development with agility and precision. The iterative process of development, guided by continuous feedback, ensures that each step taken is a step towards fulfilling the broader objectives encapsulated by the epic.

What are the benefits of using epics in Agile?

Using epics can bring several benefits that help to streamline the software development and Product Management process. These benefits not only enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your Development teams, but also ensure that the end product aligns more closely with user needs and business objectives.

Strategic alignment and visibility

One of the main advantages of using epics is the strategic alignment it offers across different levels of planning and execution within an organization. Epics are a bridge between the high-level goals of the business and the day-to-day tasks your teams undertake. This alignment ensures that every piece of work, no matter how small, contributes directly to the strategic objectives of the organization, and enhances visibility into how individual efforts feed into those goals.

Enhanced prioritization and focus

Epics enable a structured approach to prioritizing work, enabling your teams to focus on what matters most. By breaking down larger goals into more manageable chunks, you can tackle work in a prioritized manner, ensuring that resources are allocated where they’ll do the most good. Effective prioritization is vital in Agile environments where flexibility and adaptability are the name of the game.

Improved Planning and Roadmapping

Using epics can also improve your planning and roadmapping efforts. With epics clearly outlining the major areas of work, your teams can plan their sprints and releases more effectively, understanding the dependencies and the sequence in which work should be tackled. This planning extends to roadmapping, where epics provide one approach to showing a high-level view of the product’s evolution over time, making it easier for stakeholders to grasp the current and future direction of your product.

Here at ProdPad we favor Initiatives as the broad roadmap items, with Ideas representing the specific experiments or pieces of work to explore and test in order to achieve that overarching Initiative. 

Better stakeholder communication and engagement

Epics can enhance your communication with your stakeholders by providing a clear and concise way to discuss complex initiatives. Stakeholders can easily understand the scope and impact of epics, facilitating more meaningful discussions about priorities, expectations, and progress. This transparency builds trust and engagement, and ensures that everyone involved has a shared understanding of your product’s goals and status.

Increased flexibility and adaptability

Finally, the inherent flexibility of epics allows your teams to adapt to changes more easily. As new information becomes available or priorities shift, you can adjust your epics to accommodate these changes without losing sight of the original goals. This adaptability is a hallmark of Agile, and epics play a central role in enabling you to pivot as needed while keeping your momentum up.

What are the disadvantages of using epics in Agile?

While epics can offer numerous advantages, there are certain challenges and disadvantages you might encounter when incorporating them into your product management practices. Being aware of and understanding these drawbacks is important, as it will help you determine if epics and user stories are the right framework for you and your team. 

Potential for over-complexity

One of the main disadvantages of using epics is the risk of over-complicating the product’s scope. Because epics are inherently broad and usually encompass substantial objectives, there’s a tendency to include too much within a single epic, making it cumbersome and difficult to manage. This over-complexity can lead to confusion, misalignment, and a lack of focus, detracting from the Agile principles of simplicity and adaptability.

Risk of scope creep

Epics, by their nature, are more susceptible to scope creep compared to smaller, more defined tasks. As your teams work through an epic, new ideas, features, or user stories may well emerge, expanding the original scope. While adaptability is a strength of Agile, unchecked scope expansion within epics can lead to resource strain, shifting priorities, and project delays.

Challenges in prioritization

While epics are intended to help prioritize work, they can sometimes make it harder to discern the most critical tasks within the broader goal. This can be especially challenging in environments with multiple ongoing epics, where you need to navigate competing priorities. Balancing the immediate needs of the product with the strategic objectives encapsulated by epics requires diligent management and clear communication.

Mitigation strategies

To counter these disadvantages, your teams can adopt several strategies, such as employing rigorous prioritization methods, setting clear boundaries to prevent scope creep, and maintaining open channels of communication for effective stakeholder engagement. Using tools like ProdPad can also help manage these complexities by providing a structured framework for capturing, prioritizing, and tracking progress on epics (or Ideas in ProdPad) and their constituent user stories.

How to break down an epic into user stories

Breaking down an epic into user stories is one of the most important parts of the process. It’s about transforming your high-level objectives into actionable tasks that your teams can then prioritize, execute, and track.

Here’s a structured approach to effectively break down epics into user stories, ensuring that every task aligns with the overarching goals and contributes to the project’s success:

1 – Understand the epic’s objectives

Start by gaining a thorough understanding of the epic’s objectives and the value it aims to deliver. This understanding ensures that the breakdown process remains focused on achieving the desired outcomes and maintains alignment with the project’s goals.

2- Identify the key features and functionalities

Identify the key features and functionalities that the epic needs to deliver to meet its objectives. This step involves brainstorming sessions with the team and stakeholders to capture all necessary elements. Consider user needs, business requirements, and technical considerations during this phase.

3 – Create user stories

Translate the features and functionalities you’ve identified into user stories. Each user story should represent a specific, valuable addition to the product from the user’s perspective. Follow the standard user story format: “As a [type of user], I want [some goal] so that [some reason].” This format ensures that the stories are focused on user benefits and outcomes.

4 – Prioritize and refine user stories

Once you have a list of user stories, prioritize them based on their importance and contribution to the epic’s goals. Use prioritization techniques, such as the MoSCoW method or Jobs-to-be-Done, to identify which stories should be tackled first. Refine each story to ensure it is clear, achievable, and testable.

5 – Estimate and plan

Estimate the effort required for each user story and plan their execution. Engage the Development team in estimation sessions to take advantage of their expertise and ensure the planning is realistic. This step is crucial for scheduling the work in sprints and allocating resources effectively.

6 – Incorporate feedback and adapt

As you work through your user stories, continually gather feedback from your users and stakeholders. Be prepared to adapt the user stories and their priority based on this feedback to ensure that your product remains aligned with user needs and business objectives.

7 – Continuously review and adjust

Regularly review the progress of user stories within the context of the epic. Ensure that the execution of user stories is on track to achieve the epic’s objectives. Adjust the scope, priorities, or approach as necessary to address challenges, leverage new opportunities, and respond to evolving requirements.

8 – Document and Share Learnings

Document the process, challenges, successes, and learnings from the process. Share these insights with your teams and stakeholders to foster a culture of continuous improvement. Documentation can be invaluable for future initiatives, helping your teams refine their approach to breaking down and managing epics.

By following these steps, you can effectively break down your epics into user stories, ensuring that each piece of work is manageable, aligned with your strategic objectives, and focused on delivering value.

What are the alternatives to epics in Agile?

In Agile product management, while epics offer a structured way to manage initiatives, they are not the only approach for organizing and prioritizing  work. 

Various alternatives can be employed to accommodate different team sizes, project complexities, and organizational cultures. These alternatives can sometimes offer more suitable solutions for teams looking for different ways to conceptualize and manage their work.

Initiatives and Ideas on a Now-Next-Later roadmap

Here at ProdPad, we structure our product roadmap using Initiatives and Ideas. The Initiatives, in a similar way to Epics, are the broader themes, articulated as problems to solve, that we want to address. Then within each Initiative sits the next level down in our hierarchy – namely the Ideas. These Ideas represent experiments, or the specific ways in which we could solve this particular problem. 

Just user stories and tasks (and no epics)

Some Agile teams have been known to focus directly on user stories and tasks without grouping them into epics. We would caution against this approach though, because you’ll find yourself attached to a particular user story as the ‘thing to deliver’, rather than delivering against a broader goal, thereby building in the flexibility to iterative and find the best solution. If you just have a roadmap populated with user stories you will fall into the trap of being a ‘feature factory’ rather than delivering strategic value to the business and value to the customer. 

Themes

Themes are another alternative that give you a way to group work based on broader strategic goals or functionalities without getting as granular as user stories or as broad as epics. Themes are useful for guiding the overall direction of the product development effort and can be particularly effective in aligning the work with business objectives. They offer a higher-level organizational structure that is still flexible and Agile-friendly. It’s worth noting that themes and epics aren’t mutually exclusive, though.

Lean software development

Lean software development emphasizes optimizing efficiency by eliminating waste, enhancing learning, and delivering as fast as possible. Instead of organizing work into epics, Lean principles encourage teams to focus on the flow of value to the customer, continuous improvement, and the pursuit of perfection through iterative cycles.

Kanban

Kanban is a visual workflow management method (supported by ProdPad) that enables teams to visualize their work, limit work-in-progress, and maximize flow. Instead of working within the confines of epics, Kanban focuses on the continuous delivery of value through visual boards and cards, making it a flexible alternative that emphasizes throughput and efficiency.

The right organizational and management approach for you depends on many factors, including the size of your team, the scope of your project, and any specific goals you or the business might have. While epics can provide a valuable framework for managing large-scale work in Agile environments, it’s worth considering alternatives to ensure you’re adopting the most suitable strategy for your product.