For any epic in development, the product manager is responsible for creating the Epic in Azure DevOps with a specific set of criteria from this page. The Development team works with the Product Team to ask questions and to work together to refine the Epic until there is a shared understanding of what the definition of done looks like.
Main purpose: Align Product, Engineering, and UX on the tactical
requirements to deliver the necessary value to customers.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Start with a one-sentence summary of the expected outcome of this Epic that is used
in the Description fields for Azure DevOps.
2. Then elaborate with the user value or technical business value statement, where
applicable for those epics.
3. Finally, briefly (think Executive Summary) summarize the purpose/scope of the Epic.
BUSINESS VALUE
Goals of Epic tied to ARR, CSAT goals etc.
USER IMPACT
Table of the users that will be impacted by the expected results of this Epic. For each
internal user segment or external user persona, describe the impact that this Epic will
have on their life. Be sure to consider both positive and negative changes to their current
state and how any negative impacts may be mitigated with future development or the
launch process.
CONSTRAINTS
Optional to help drive clarity. This may include Out of Scope items, critical milestones,
technology constraints, current state capabilities, etc.
EXPECTED RESULTS
What is the high-level, bulleted list of requirements? Why would a customer care? What is
the value to a customer or the business? How frequently will the feature be used by
customers? This should not be the same as the acceptance criteria.
WORKFLOW LIST
Describe and list the user workflow(s) based on the user type. Include links to any mocks -
links should be to the living documentation, if available
DOCUMENTATION & LINKS
Provide links to all relevant and supporting artifacts. Add to this list as the team proceeds
through solutioning, with links to the outcome of any related UX or technical research,
technical design documentation, etc.
ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA
Outline acceptance criteria to help the team understand what successfully done looks like. In addition to functional user acceptance, this should include:
- Accessibility
- Objectives for performance, security, and other non-functional
requirements
- How success may be measured (there may not be clear criteria until research has
been completed or a solution defined, but ideas can be captured early on)
DEPENDENCIES
Call out any dependencies an EPIC has on another EPIC that belongs to the same team
or a different team/product.
OPEN QUESTIONS
A table at the bottom of the description captures open questions from the team and the
next steps to either
decide that the question does not need to be answered for the scope of this epic or
capture ownership and next steps for getting an answer.
Turn these next steps into stories/spikes in your backlog, so you can work to answer them
early enough!