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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. 

Epics provide you with an additional hierarchy of story management, providing planning guidance for groups of issues within, or across, projects. This allows ScrumMasters and Product Managers to measure important groups of issues that are all related by a common theme.

See Creating an Epic and Adding an Issue to an Epic.

(Note: In JIRA, epic is a searchable field — see the JIRA JQL documentation for details.)

For more on Epics you may want to read over these two excellent articles:

If your project administrator has set up epics for your project, you will be able to create epics and link them to child issues, such as stories. You can then view the epic and related issues via the GreenHopper search.

(info) Please note that epics are not yet available on the Rapid Board. In the interim you may want to use labels and quick filters.

To create an epic,

  1. Login to JIRA.
  2. Select Agile > Classic in the top navigation bar. Then select Classic Planning Board from the drop-down below the project name.
  3. Select your project from the project dropdown in the top left of the Planning Board, if it is not already selected. The Planning Board will refresh with information for your project.
  4. Click the 'New Card' button (at the right of the screen). Create a new card with the appropriate issue type, i.e. 'Epic', if your project administrator has set it up. See Creating an Issue in GreenHopper for details.
  5. Save the new card. If your project is using the 'Scrum' template, the new card's issue key will automatically appear in its 'Epic' field. If not, edit the new card and type its issue key into the 'Epic' field.

To associate an issue with an epic,

  1. Login to JIRA.
  2. Select Agile > Classic in the top navigation bar. Then select Classic Planning Board from the drop-down below the project name.
  3. Select your project from the project dropdown in the top left of the Planning Board, if it is not already selected. The Planning Board will refresh with information for your project.
  4. Locate the card you want to associate with your epic, and click the icon to the right of the 'Epic' field to edit it. (This icon will appear when your mouse pointer hovers over the Epic field).
  5. Enter the issue key for your epic in the 'Epic' field and click the 'tick' icon to save this change. Your issue will be associated with the epic.

To view all issues associated with an epic,

  1. Login to JIRA.
  2. Select Agile > Classic in the top navigation bar. Then select Classic Planning Board from the drop-down below the project name.
  3. Select your project from the project dropdown in the top left of the Planning Board, if it is not already selected. The Planning Board will refresh with information for your project.
  4. You now have two options:
    • On an epic card, click the epic's key at the bottom right of the card to see all the associated cards.
      (info) The words 'Show all linked issues' will appear when you hover over the epic's key.
    • On a non-epic card, click the associated epic key in the 'Epic/Theme' field of the card.
  5. The GreenHopper 'Epic/Theme' popup window will display, showing all cards associated with the epic. The card for the epic and statistics for all issues associated with the epic will be displayed on the right of the popup window.

Screenshot 1: Viewing all issues associated with an epic from an epic card

Screenshot 2: Viewing an epic and associated issues on the GreenHopper 'Epic/Theme' popup window

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