What is the difference between Epic/Theme and Label and how to use them with Kanban?

[PM] Immo Eiben May 13, 2012

Hey,

could you please help me to understand the difference in meaning and using of Epic, Epic/Theme and Labels. (we are using Kanban)

I already looked it up in the documenation http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/GH/Working+with+Epics and searched for it on this board. (https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/787/what-is-the-difference-between-epic-as-issue-and-epic-theme-as-a-field-in-an-issue)

What I understood so far is that Epics are used to group several user story. To do so it is decribed to create a new card with Issue Type "Epic" on the Planning Board. I assume that it should be titled with an generic title (ie. shopping card).After that I should be able to associate issues to that Epic by using Epic/Theme (a little pencil appears). But when I click on Epic/Theme after creating the epic it is not shown on the list.

Does that mean that I have to create a new label on Epic/Theme and then associate every issue to this label? (it looks different in the documentation) If that's true what is the difference to labelling?

As you can see I am very confused.

Looking forward to your replies.

1 answer

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Answer accepted
AgentSmith
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
July 11, 2013

Greetings!

Epics are issue types but only appy to Scrum boards. In other words, you wouldn't have the ability to manage Epics in Kanban Boards as compared to Scrum Boards' Plan mode.

We have a similiar post here:

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/120764/new-rapid-board-epic-management-in-kanban

Which ultimately leads to the following request to leverage epics in Kanban boards:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS-7052

If you feel strongly about this issue, you are encouraged to comment, vote and watch ticket GHS-7052 for subsequent updates.

I am sorry I could not be of more service, but hope it helps clarify things.

Cheers,
Jason | Atlassian

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