Documentation for GreenHopper 6.2.x. Documentation for other versions of JIRA Agile is available too.
GreenHopper is now called JIRA Agile. Learn more.

An epic captures a large body of work. It is essentially a large user story that can be broken down into a number of smaller stories. It may take several sprints to complete an epic. 

In GreenHopper, an epic is simply an issue of type "Epic", which has a name (e.g. "My Epic") with which other issues can be associated (linked).

(info) This page only applies to Scrum boards.
 

To create a new epic,

  1. Log in to JIRA.
  2. Click the Agile link's down-arrow in the top navigation bar, then select your preferred board from the resulting dropdown menu.

  3. Your board will be displayed. Click Plan.
  4. If the Epics panel is not shown at the left of the screen, select Tools > Show Epic Panel.
  5. Hover anywhere in the Epics panel.
  6. Click Create epic at the top right of the Epics panel (see Screenshot 1).
  7. You will be prompted to create an issue of type "Epic" (see Screenshot 2).
    (info) For more details, please see Creating an Issue.
  8. In the Epic Name field, enter a short name. The Epic Name (rather than the Summary) will be used to identify your epic and to label issues that belong to it.
  9. Your new epic will be added to your board's Epics panel.

Next steps:

 

Screenshot 1: the EPICS panel (click to enlarge)


Screenshot 2: creating an issue of type "Epic" (click to enlarge)