Developing Epics for Scrum Masters

Epics

Epics are basically large user stories that are made up of smaller stories and aim to complete a certain user workflow. Each epic has a different goal that needs to be reached, and are too general to fully detail the work that needs to be done. Some features ideated while getting feedback from a customer may look simple at first. When these features are then planned for a Sprint and they turn out to be too big, they might actually be more appropriate to be listed as epics. It can also be suggested that when a group of five or more stories is seen to share a similar focus, an epic can be constructed to group these stories together.

Epic Example

Let’s say a Scrum Team wants to improve their product backlog management tool. They could say: “We want a burn-down chart that summarizes our progress throughout the project.”

Because they want to treat it as a backlog item, they write it in the following user format:

As a Scrum Team, we want to have a burn-down chart so that we can see our project progress.

While the objectives are clear, they might start asking specifics on this story, what they can do with it, and to what extent they can use this feature. They could ask things like:

1. Can I select a range of sprints for the chart to display?
2. Can I toggle between Release and Sprint burn-down charts?

In order to address these questions, they can further break these down into the following user stories:

1. As a Product Owner, I want to set the range of sprints in the Release Burn-down Chart so that we can focus on a specific set of sprints to discuss.
2. As a Product Owner, I want to have a burn-down chart that displays the progress of releases so that I present a visual of the project overview to stakeholders.
3. As a Developer, I want to see the burn-down chart of the current Sprint so that we can visualize the remaining work for the Sprint.

Recommended Further Reading

The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: