In this article, we will help you to understand themes and epics.
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Skip Ahead to: Default Sections in Themes/Epic Form Common Operations to Manage Themes/Epics Tracking the Progress of Parent Cards on the Execution Board |
Themes and Epics Overview
Themes is a collection of related user stories. An Epic can also be the subset of a Theme. So, the User Story can be tagged to a Theme or it can also be tagged to an Epic which is in turn tagged to a Theme. For example, you can have a theme ‘UI Revamp’ to which the epic ‘Analytics Revamp’ can be tagged. User Stories in Backlog can be grouped according to Epics and Themes.
Epics can be a large user story, typically one which is too big to implement. Epics can be disaggregated into smaller User stories when required. User Story can be tagged as epics to help track them for related sprints or releases. For example, you can have an epic named ‘Analytics Revamp’ which can consist of User Stories likeability to drag-drop widgets, add a component, an icon to switch between a line chart and a bar chart, etc.
The relation between User Stories, Epics, and Themes can be illustrated in layman’s terms as follows:
- A user story is simply something a user wants. For example, the user wants to order takeout.
- A scrum epic is a large user story. So, epic would be the type of takeout like for instance ‘Chinese cuisine’ or ‘Fast food’.
- Finally, “theme” is a collection or grouping of user stories. So, the theme could be ‘Chinese Sushi and Noodles’ or ‘Big Mac Burgers with Fries and soft drinks.
Navigation
Navigate to the breadcrumb at the top and hover over the Project name, expand the Execute module, and you can find Themes and Epics respectively.
Default Sections in Themes/Epic Form
The default sections appearing for a Theme and Epic Form are Details, Epics (For Theme Form only), User Story, Linked Cards, Comments & Attachments, Activity Log, and ToDos.
A Form consists of standard sections available for various activities such as, gathering input, showing its Epics and User Stories, showing linked cards, etc. You can also create your own sections to gather input, review, track, and so on.
Following are the standard sections in a Form:
- Details: The Details section displays, gathers, and tracks all information related to the project item.
- Linked Cards: It helps you to set parent-child hierarchy and relationship between themes/epics and workitems and trace them while working with them.
- Comments & Attachments: The members can add comments related to the project item which are then listed in the Comments section. When a project item requires more data for reference, you can attach files that can be downloaded, edited, and uploaded.
- Activity Log: The Activity log displays the list of operations in reverse chronological order for activities performed such as updating, closing, reopening, etc. In the Activity Log, you can view the various versions and the differences between the two versions of a workitem. For more information, see Activity Log.
- System Fields: All the system-generated fields or un-editable fields are listed in the System Fields segment. For more information, click here.
Common Operations to Manage Themes/Epics
- Edit
- Multiline Add Item
- Delete
- Export
- Import
- Copy
- Multi Sort
- Log Effort for the Epics/Themes (available only for projects which have the ‘Include in Timesheet’ option selected for the Epics/Themes Form).
Tracking the Progress of Parent Cards on the Execution Board
The Percent Complete and Child Percent Complete column in the Themes/Epics Form helps to know the overall progress of the Form/card on the execution board so that the product owner can know how much work of a particular epic is done, how many user stories or epics are completed and how much work is remaining.
