Epic definition (development) in agile

[liora_milbaum]

A team of 20 people are about to start using Jira Software.  Almost each person in the team is involved in multi discipline tasks. For example: one of the lead developers is also the one who develops the epics or/and writes the design documents. 

It takes months to complete one design document.  What are the best practices for tracking epic development tasks in parallel to implementation tasks in a specific sprint?

Do we issue tasks for writing design documents?

Are those tasks linked to an epic?

Do I assign those tasks to Sprints? But, such a task spawns over multiple sprints (each 3 weeks long)?

[Bhushan Nagaraj]

Hi Liora,

Several questions regarding your "Agile practice" before you look at how tools can help.

Are 20 people all on the same team? How are they organized? ex: per product

If it takes months to complete one design document, is Agile really suitable?

If your tasks spawn across sprints, can they be broken down into smaller tasks and estimated in each sprint?

With the nature of the questions above, I believe some consulting with your Agile practices is more essential than the tools that support it.

Regards

Bhushan