Sprint 57 :: Themes vs Epics vs Stories, what is what?
Product management in a agile world is ever changing and ever complex. Here in Product Land we have worked with a multitude of different Agile teams, and as such we have seen a lot of different stuff.
One of the most difficult things we dealt with in Product Management where teams that had little knowledge of how agile works, and this proves difficult to manage as you have to heavily explain everything once you start making some changes.
At a Jira level, we’ve had some issues with teams that didn’t understand what’s the difference between a Theme, a Epic and a Story and wanted each of those described to the fullest and with every detail there is, in the latest years I found a easy way to explain it.
Theme (Or Initiative, Scope…)
The Theme is the WHY you are doing this. What is the purpose of doing it? How will it help the company, why will it be needed.
This will be a high level description of what we will need to build, with some conjectures and informed decisions in the middle, but it’s at a very high level. Think “We need to build a house to protect us from the environment and keep us warm and safe”, and then you describe the why it’s needed, how is it needed, you create some conjectures based on the house “Is it near other houses? is it a big house or a small house, how many floors does the house have, does it have a celar…“
Epic
The epic is the WHAT in this story, what are we building (a house), what are the floors (A basement, a first and second floor), what is the purpose of each floor (basement will keep stuff, first floor is a living room, second floor is bedrooms) Still on a high level, only it’s a little bit more described than the Theme. You may need various Epics to build everything, so you might have one epic for the basement, one for the first and another for the second floor. This will help you divide the work. It’s in the epic where you start getting more granular about the descriptions.
Story
The Stories are the HOW we are building this. It has the details, as an example we are going to take the basement.
The description of this would be something like
As a homeowner I want a house that as a basement with electricity, so that I am able to keep all the necessary utilities for the house and a home-office.
Then you would need a bit more of a description, so that the guys at the other end understand what you are talking about, but any other person who is not an engineer would also understand it. Something as:
The basement needs to be have 15 electric sockets so that I am able to connect the washing machine, heater, TV, laptop and so on.
It depends on the company and team, but you can describe it more, give it some juice as “John needs a place to works and found it in the form of a basement, for this he needs the basement to have 15 electric sockets in order o connect this and that”
And then you further divide everything you need.
"John needs a staircase in order to get to the basement, this staircase has “X“ steps…”
And that’s it.
Another cool method for explaining how this works, is to grab a wallet and explain it with a wallet.
The wallet itself is a Theme, inside you have the card holders that are the epics and in each card holder you have a bunch of card that are the stories. They each fit into the larger scale and that’s how this is all organized.
Themes are big views of why something is done.
Epics are medium views of what to be done.
Stories are detailed views of how to do it.
ProductLand wishes you happy festivities! And don’t forget to ask for some Product stuff during this festivities!
Ask for a new notebook!
With Love,
The Product Land ⛰️
Wanna know more? Stay tuned and subscribe for the next sprints! ☟
Subscribed
And also.. get in touch with us if you want to! 🌐