Epic

[Nyco]

• Context: In Agile and DevOps teams, specifications are usually described as "User Stories".
• Problem:
  Sometimes it is extremely difficult to communicate in a multi-discplinary context (UX, QA, dev, sales, marketing, ops, Scrum Master, agile coach, Product Owner/Manager).
  The problem is: the card is the unit of work in Deck which may be too precise, too focussed, too narrow, too tiny.
  As a consequence, it is difficult to present things in a more abstract or higher level
• Solution:
  A possible solution is to add an "Epic" feature, as a set of Cards (but not using Labels), as it is often used in Agile/DevOps contexts.
• Benefits:
  The main benefits are you can plan and communicate that plan to higher levels and C-levels, like a roadmap.

If this feature can potentially be accepted, we can start to design it: just give us a go.

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Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
A card is too precise.

Describe the solution you'd like
An Epic feature would be nice.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Use of labels as Epics. But this is overloading the number of Labels.

Additional context
It is often used in Agile teams.

[stefan-niedermann]

Please use the search function before opening new issues.

See for example

• Epics #1940
• Dependencies (parent/child) card management #272

and related (in terms of grouping elements withing a board)

• Sub-cards? #2103 (Sub-cards)
• Swimlanes support #32 (Swimlanes)
• Feature request: Something similar like sprints #855 (Sprints)

Personally i would advice you to use the Nextcloud Projects feature to connect multiple cards to one bigger project - as a benefit you are able to also link Talk rooms and other artifacts in Nextcloud to a Project.

[Nyco]

Sorry, you are right, I didn't find the other "Epics" card: #1940

An Epic is not a sub-card, nor a dependency, nor a group of cards, nor a swimlane, nor a sprint.

Trying fast definitions and marking the differences:

• epic:
  • def: a group of task related to the same big feature
  • use: as an umbrella card that holds other cards
• sub-card:
  • def: it may be a card, but it is broken down (or "split" or "cut") from an original card, that sub-card may bring some content and meta-data copied from its original
  • use: when you need split/divide a card into smaller cards, for example, so that it fits in a sprint in a sprint, or so that you lower the undertainty
• label
  • def: flexible and customisable field of meta data
  • use: basically everything
• groups of cards
  • def: quite explicit, but loose definition
  • use: this does not say how nor what the use is
• swimlane
  • def: a visual lane in a kanban board, fit for given classes of service
  • use: SLA, like "Urgent customer demand", or "Internal need in order to be able to code faster later"
• sprint:
  • def: a grouping by the period of time in whihc this card must be treated and done (delivered)
  • use: scrum or scrumban (mix/hybird between Scrum and Kanban)

Example:

An Epic for the development of Deck could be "Write a Epic feature".

That would be "Epic 3", with stories B, C, D, H, and M. And later S.

• Epic 3:
  • Story B: CRUD Epic
    • label: New feature
    • swimlane: High-level
    • sprint: 2
  • Story C: Add/remove card from Epic
    • label: Enhancement
    • swimlane: : High-level
    • sprint: 3
  • Story D: Epic view
    • label: Visualisation
    • swimlane:
    • sprint: 3
  • Story H: Add Epic in Upcoming cards
    • label: Enhancement, Visualisation
    • swimlane:
    • sprint: 5
  • Story M: Epic metrics
    • label: Metrics
    • swimlane: High-level
    • sprint: 7
  • Story S: Roadmap
    • label: Visualisation
    • swimlane:
    • sprint: 9

[Nyco]

Epics in:

• JIRA: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/epics
• Taiga: https://tree.taiga.io/support/epics/what-is-an-epic/
• Asana: https://asana.com/guide/examples/project-management/asana-agile?missingtranslation=en#gl-epics
• Trello:
  • https://trello.com/power-ups/5b7ae739fad82e45988016cf/epic-cards-by-screenful
  • https://screenful.com/epics-for-trello
• GitLab: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/
• Redmine: https://www.redmineup.com/pages/blog/how-to-manage-epics-user-stories-in-redmine

[putt1ck]

Is it not just a "project" where multiple boards are connected together?

[Nyco]

I'd say an Epic is contained in a project or a product.
Some even add a layer on top of Epics: Themes.

[putt1ck]

I was thinking in Nextcloud terms, where "projects" are used to link together different assets and asset types.

[Nyco]

Nextcloud's projects are meant - if I understand correctly - to "group" different objects such as file/folder, board, discussion, etc.

An Epic would stay inside a Deck board as a group of cards.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[juliusknorr]

Thanks for your feature request. I can see this is a valid use case however we currently consider deck more as a simple tool that is easy to use and want to keep the complexity low. We target common use cases but don’t necessarily want to extend to a fully fledged project management tool. There are lots of good open source tools out there already for more complex use cases. Therefore I’d consider this out of scope.

[RubensRainelli]

I'd really need it...