3SD handbook

Epic descriptions

This page has a list of questions that are useful to consider when writing an epic description. The questions are grouped into different areas.

Think of the questions as pointers - you won't need to answer all of them but your description should probably cover all of the areas.

Please be concise and use simple language - this is an exercise in making our work as easy as possible to understand (not in making our work sound impressive or complicated). Try and avoid platitudes and lofty generalised statements, jargon, and business speak. If you are wondering whether to include something, it makes sense to err on the side of being explicit since others may not have the knowledge you have.

The wider business context

  • What is the current situation?
  • What is the challenge and pain points? What are people struggling with or frustrated about?
  • What business processes does this epic support?
  • How does this business process fit into the wider picture at the organisation?
  • What tools and processes are already in place?
  • What epics or previous work does this epic build on and learn from?
  • What other epics or tasks will this work enable?
  • Is this a new idea/project or are we improving an existing process?
  • Why are we doing this?

What we will do

  • What specific things will we do / put in place?
  • How will these meet the organisational objectives / solve the problems
  • What will be better as a result of this epic?
  • What criteria will we use to establish whether this epic is complete?
  • What targets are we setting ourselves in this epic?
  • Are there any alternative approaches that we could explore?

If the epic is straight forward with not much discovery needed (or discovery has been done already), we may be able to be very specific on what we want to do. For epics where more discovery is needed, we don't need or want to propose 'solutions' at this stage.

Dependencies and constraints

  • What other epics or tasks need to be done before this epic can be started or completed?
  • What epics depend on this work?
  • What other external constraints are there?

Discovery work

  • What do we need to explore in more detail before we start on the implementation?
  • What discovery process and tools would be appropriate?

Resist the temptation to do the discovery at this stage. Instead, just add a budget for discovery to the epic.

Client involvement

  • What parts of this epic do we expect the client to do?
  • Are there any aspects of this work that the client could optionally take on?

Risks

  • Is this something we have done before? Or it is something less well understood?
  • What risks are there, and how might we mitigate these risks?
  • How achievable does this epic feel? If it feels very ambitious think of ways that we might be able to make it more achievable, e.g. by doing a pilot.

Provisional estimate

An epic should always have an estimate against it, and it is important to make this as realistic as possible, as clients often plan their budgets around these estimates. Read more about how to put together an estimate for an epic.