In this video we will discuss Epics. We will start with an overview of Epics. We have discussed stories, tasks, bugs and subtasks. An Epic is an issue type that has a bigger scope than all of these. How they are actually used is up to the team. This video will contain some ideas on how to use them. An Epic is a large issue. An Epic can span multiple iterations, projects, teams, and boards. It can serve as a placeholder for many stories. For example, an epic might be to create an iPhone version of an app. You would then break this into stories when the team is available to actually work on it. An epic can contain issues. They can contain stories, tasks, bugs, custom issue types, and can even contain subtasks. Epics are useful because they provide an organization of the team's work, rather than having unrelated issues. They are useful if the work spans multiple iterations. Also having one placeholder story to represent a lot of work can simplify the backlog. You don't want to create detailed plans too early. Next we will discuss working with epics. You can create an Epic by selecting the Epic Issue Type when creating an issue. Here we have created an Epic named, Big Feature A If you want to add an issue to an Epic when you are creating an issue you select the epic from the epic length drown. All issues with this epic length value belong to the epic. You also can add an existing issue to an epic at a time using the epic link drop down. To view the issues of an epic, you can open the epic issue. Issues that belong to this epic are shown. The kanban board can show the epic issue itself, and any issues that belong to it are labeled. Here you can see the epic issue, and the story that belongs to the epic. If you view an issue belonging to an epic, you will see the epic in the Epic link field. You can click on the link to view the epic. At some point you might realize that an existing story is bigger than you thought and want to convert it to an epic. You can do this by changing the Issue Type to Epic. When your project has Epics, you can configure Swimlanes by Epic. Navigate to the Swimlanes tab of the board's settings and select Epics from the base Swimlanes on drop down. Each Epic will automatically have its own Swimlane. We're showing swimlanes for a kanban board here, but swimlanes can also be configured with scrum and agility boards. Here we see our epic swimlane. The issues of the epic are separated from the rest of the issues on the board. An epic is an issue type in Jira, and like all issue types, has an issue key. If an issue is part of an epic, its epic link field contains the issue key of the epic issue which can be thought of as its parent. Here we are searching for all issues that are part of this epic. We can use Jira's autocomplete to help create this query. Next, we will discuss epics and kanban backlogs. If you enable a kanban backlog on a kanban board, you have the option of enabling the Epics panel. This will display an epic in the panel in the backlog instead of as a card on the board. Once you have enabled the Epics panel in the kanban backlog, the Epic issue will no longer appear on the board independent of the status of the Epic issue. Here, we are viewing only issues of our epic that have a status of backlog. You can see that there is currently one issues for our epic that is in the backlog. You only want to enable the epics panel if your epic issue has child issues. If the epic is currently an issue with no child issues, you do not want to use the epics panel, because the epic will not appear as an issue on your board, or in your backlog. Notice that there is a Create epic link in the epics panel. This is an alternative to creating an epic by creating an issue with an issue type of epic. You can mark an epic as done by selecting the drop down next to the epic name and selecting mark as done. If you try to mark an Epic with incomplete issues as done, Jira will warn you and ask you to confirm. When you confirm, the Epic status field will be set to done. Next we will discuss Epics and scrum. In a scrum project, you can click Create epic under the epics tab of the product backlog. This is similar to creating an epic from the kanban backlog. The Create epic dialog will open. You can see that this is like creating an issue and selecting epic as the issue type. You can use the Epics panel in the backlog to monitor the current status of the epic. Notice the Create issue in epic link. You can start the process of creating an issue in the epic here. You can mark an epic as done in the background in the same way that it is done for kanban projects. Click Mark as done from the drop down next to the epic name. When you mark an epic as done it no longer shows up in the epic's panel of the backlog. The epic status field for the epic issue is set to a value of done. If you want to undo an epic marked as done, you can search for issues with an epic status field set to done. This shows the epic that we just marked as done. From the more menu in the upper right, you can select the Bulk change option. Select Edit issues to edit the epic. Click the Change Epic Status box and change the Epic Status to In Progress. After making the change to the Epic Status, you will see your Epic back in the Backlog. Under the Reports tab you can view the Epic Report. This shows the current status of the Epic as well as the list of its issues. You can view the epic burndown chart to see your progress on the epic as you complete sprints. Here is a review of what we discussed in this video. An epic is a large issue of issue type epic that may contain other issues. The epic link field is used to associate issues with an epic. Epics can be shown on boards or in backlogs. Now it's time for you to work on some of the things that we discussed in this video. Separate hands-on instructions are provided for you.
