Planning a version

A version is a set of features and fixes released together as a single update to your application. Assigning issues to versions helps you plan the order in which new features (stories) for your application will be released to your customers.

Learn more: Configuring versions in a Scrum project and Configuring versions in a Kanban project

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. You might use epics to capture broader themes in a release, e.g. performance-related work.

Learn more: Working with epics

You can use a number of different branching strategies, including task branching, feature branching, and release branching. You'll need to decide how much work should to be contained in a branch before merging, when deciding on a strategy.  

If you decide to use the release branching model, you'll create your branches at the start of a version. For example, you might create a branch for your last version, so you can continue with bugfix work on that branch, while new development work is done on the master branch.

Learn more: Branches (Bitbucket Server documentation), Branching a repository (Bitbucket Cloud documentation), Creating and deleting branches (GitHub documentation)

^{Tip: You can create a branch via an issue, if Jira Software is connected to Bitbucket Cloud, Bitbucket Server, or GitHub.}