using EPICS vs labels for large project type buckets

Jennie Doran September 23, 2020

Hello. I'm wondering if anyone using Jira Kanban boards for a marketing team and can advise on best use of EPICS. Some members of my team are insisting that for our team's major work areas -permanent categories (ex: internal comms, external marketing) - we should use EPICS to group them. This seems like it could work, but I think EPICS (because they are issues) are not meant to be permanent work "categories" but rather very large, maybe longer running jobs that have many smaller tasks within. Another team member suggested using Labels for the perm categories. Then using EPICS as they are probably intended. If we do that we would have a lot of EPICS created over time that come and go. Not a bad thing, but we do need something clear to categorize and see how many issues we have within the work type categories.

It's important to know my team has - and only really wants - one Project in Jira (we are part of a larger company using Jira across a lot of areas) - so not really an option to make a different Project for each work type category.

As a side note, I think if we used EPICS for the categories that never changed, we would then use Stories for larger jobs and add issues that are tasks to those stories. This has appeal for keeping the highest level of issues very simple for the team over time.

Sorry this if this is confusing. Just hoping to make a good case for best practices in the tool based on advice from others in similar team situations. Thanks!

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Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_
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September 23, 2020

Hi,

I think your suggestion better matches with the way Jira is set up. For a marketing team, I would imagine Epics like New website, Rebranding, New product launch, or other large projects. You can also create Epics for things like "Q1 Content Strategy" if you need to attach regular marketing tasks like social media content prep, blog articles, etc to an Epic.

Good luck!

Jennie Doran September 23, 2020

thank you Laura!

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