Should you put estimates on Jira Epics?

[Nicole Durante]

I know you estimate Stories but do you estimate the Epics as a whole? Also, if you did estimate the Epics as a whole, would the user stories in the epic become duplicate work? 

[Tarun Sapra · Accepted solution]

Hello @Nicole Durante 

In Agile, estimations are not considered concrete and there is always the "risk" factor which everybody in the team agrees upon when estimating.

Now, we do estimate at story level in story points which is based on relative complexity and works pretty well for us. As far as estimation on epics are concerned then we need to remember that larger the estimation the less accurate it is. But still I prefer to have some sort of estimation on Epics as that helps the PO in sizing the backlog and doing capacity planning for next few sprints as that's generally required in all big organizations. 

The way you estimate on Epics is upto you, but what I have seen working the best is either     "T-shirt size estimation" on epics or "numbers of sprints" instead of story points. 

[Jack Brickey]

I would never consider doing this TBH but I guess it depends on your scenario and why that might be important. In my world Epics are containers for my stories and given the nature of the Epics are rarely well understood up front from a sizing perspective.