About epic
Epics, in agile methodology, can be defined as large user stories that can be split into multiple smaller user stories. This trait of breaking down complex stories into smaller chunks allows them to run across sprints. In turn, the single mass of work can be simplified into manageable tasks and handled in multiple sprints. This is most vital in requirements that cannot be completed in a single iteration.
In the case of Zoho Sprints, large stories, tasks, and bugs can be broken down into smaller work items that are grouped under an epic. The items can be distributed across many sprints until all items in the epic are completed. When all the items reach completion, the epic comes to a close and the requirement or user story is ready to be rolled out.
Benefits
- Help your team organize your work and to create a hierarchy
- Cut up a single complex work item into manageable pieces of work and still track their progress as a single entity.
- Achieve larger goals with optimum planning and effort.
- Adopt epics for a successful agile model of project management.
Difference between an epic and user story
At first sight, it might be hard to differentiate between epics and user stories. However, an epic is a larger user story that defines a big chunk of work. Whereas, stories are smaller entities that come together to form the epic. Epics are developed during the product planning and then broken into small stories and stored in the product backlog.
Example
Let's assume you have an online shopping website. You and your team are creating your signup page and it qualifies as a large user story because this is a crucial point for your customer. Signing up successfully greatly depends on the pitch and the usability of the page and the user can sign up through different channels.
You can create an Epic called Sign up.
Access privileges
| Feature | Admin | Manager | Member |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create epic |  | |  |
| Edit epic | | * Epic creator or owner | |
| Delete epic | | * Epic creator or owner | |
| View epic details | | | |
| Add new work items to epic | | | |
| Associate existing work items to epic | | * Epic creator or owner | |
| Reorder epics | | | |
| View all epics in the project | | | |
| Move work items across epics | | * Sprint owner | |