 | Epics & Themes |
As mentioned in the Stories section, there may often be complex features in a product build that are too big to build as a single story but need to be categorized, and sometimes built, together. While not officially named in the Scrum framework, many organizations use Epics & Themes for these purposes.
Importantly, not all frameworks, teams or enterprises will define or use them in the same way. Atlassian, Scrum Alliance, consultants like HyperVelocityConsulting & AgileModeling, and bloggers/coaches like Constantin Guay, are all consistent on the definition and usage of a Story, but there is considerable divergence in how they encourage the use of Epics and themes.
Epics
An epic is most typically described as …
a collection of stories that are closely related, but which cannot be built together within a single sprint
Many authors consider epics to simply be large stories–stories that, even if broken down, represent a complete workflow for a user. From the Agile perspective, grouping stories so that they
- Remain small enough to build efficiently but
- Constitute working functionality or “business value” to the end user
Maintaining epics is a good idea.
This can be challenging in certain software environments.
When it is low in the backlog, there is no reason to split up an epic, or perhaps even to call it something other than a story (at least before its ###complexity### has been measured). As it approaches the top, however, it needs to be broken down in order to be built efficiently, or even be split across multiple sprints. Once built, however, it makes logical sense to think of the epic items again as a single unit. What to call it is up for debate.
Some suggest that an epic should simply disappear once it has been split into stories. Some find ways to maintain a cluster as an epic throughout the build process. Still others use other items available (such as “themes” and “features”) to maintain these connections.
Themes
Some definitions:
a collection of separate stories that fall under the same category – HVC
a link between stories, like an annotation, that provides a simple way of thinking about the whole activity they represent–a quick way of explaining to others what the system is about – CG
groups of related stories that may contribute to a common goal or are related in some obvious way (such as all focusing on a single customer) but which may or may not be dependent on one another and do not need to encapsulate a specific work flow or be delivered together – SA
a collection of related stories, often used to organize stories into releases or to organize them so that various subteams can work on them, such as (in a university registration system) students, course management, transcript generation, grade administration, financial processing – AM
are large focus areas that span the organization, or an organization goal that drives the creation of epics and initiatives – A (clearly a divergence from the typical definitions)