An epic is a "large" user story that is broken down into smaller user stories. In the practices content there is
no distinction between user story and epic as separate artifacts, but in IBM Rational Team Concert the epic is called out as a separate work item type because it has a slightly different set of
properties than a user story work item.
The epic work item can be assigned an owner, which may be responsible for breaking it down into smaller user stories
that are more easily managed and assigned to developers in an iteration. The epic owner would then mark the state of
the epic according to the proposed state machine - the epic would be considered "done" when all child user stories (and
other assigned tasks) are marked as done.
State
|
Definition
|
Following Action
|
Following State
|
Task/Activity
|
|
|
Initialize
|
Identified
|
Plan Iteration
|
Identified
|
Newly identified or reopened epic
|
Defer
|
Deferred
|
Plan Project
|
Mark Done
|
Done
|
Test
|
Start Working
|
In Progress
|
Develop User Story
|
Mark Invalid
|
Invalid
|
Plan Project
|
In Progress
|
Epic is being broken down into smaller user stories (which in turn are
being developed)
|
Defer
|
Deferred
|
Plan Project
|
Mark Done
|
Done
|
Test
|
Mark Invalid
|
Invalid
|
Plan Project
|
Invalid
|
Epic is invalid
|
Defer
|
Deferred
|
Plan Project
|
Mark Done
|
Done
|
Test
|
Start Working
|
In Progress
|
Develop User Story
|
Reopen
|
Identified
|
Plan Iteration
|
Done
|
Epic is completed (child user stories are done)
|
Defer
|
Deferred
|
Plan Project
|
Reopen
|
Identified
|
Plan Iteration
|
Deferred
|
Epic is deferred or removed from the backlog, for one of the
reasons:
-
Duplicate
-
Implemented
-
Implemented Upstream
-
Later
-
Won't Implement
-
Works For Me
|
Mark Done
|
Done
|
Test
|
Start Working
|
In Progress
|
Develop User Story
|
Mark Invalid
|
Invalid
|
Plan Project
|
Reopen
|
Identified
|
Plan Iteration
|
Table 1 - State machine of the epic work item
|