Created 2025-01-14T21:19:49Z
Updated 2025-01-17T11:18:07Z
Type Information
Status In Progress

Features, Epics, Stories, Themes, and Initiatives represent different levels of granularity in planning and organising work for an Agile Project:

  • Initiatives: High-level strategic goals that span multiple teams and projects. They align with the organization’s overall objectives.
  • Themes: Collections of related work items that contribute to a specific strategic goal or area of focus. They can span multiple initiatives.
  • Epics: Large bodies of work that can be broken down into smaller tasks. An epic often represents a significant feature or capability.
  • Features: Specific functionalities or pieces of the product that deliver value to the user. Features can be part of an epic.
  • Stories: The smallest units of work. They describe a specific user scenario or requirement and are often written in the format of “As a [user], I want [functionality], so that [benefit].” Stories will also have acceptance criteria expressed as “Given …, When …, Then …”.

Initiatives and Themes provide high-level guidance, while Epics and Features break down that guidance into actionable work, and Stories represent the detailed tasks to be implemented and value to be delivered.

Questions to ask:

When presented with a “requirement”

  • Tell me who the requirement is for?
  • And what problem this solves for them?
  • How will this fit into their work?