Insights Into Federal Agile Transformation Q&A: Deliver Value by Turning Epics Into User Stories

Welcome to the Makpar Insights into Federal Agile Transformation content series designed to provide federal IT leaders with all of the strategic tools and insights they need to best leverage Agile development today – and into the future.

In this installment, we speak with Nickolas Sibley, the Agile Coach & Trainer at Makpar, who provides insights into how to deliver value by turning Epics into User Stories in the Agile process.

The following conversation has been edited for length.

Q: What is an Epic? What is a Feature? What is a Story?

An Epic is something big and comes from the Portfolio/Program level. It is something that a company needs to do. An example would be adopting Microsoft Azure DevOps, where we build it and gain acceptability by the user. The Product Owner – who owns the product vision and release map – breaks down the Epic into Features with the Business Owners and team.

From that point, the Product Owner works with the analyst to break down the Features, such as automating testing of the tool. The stories consist of all the things that need to be broken down independently to deliver the Feature, can be delivered independently, and when completed, complete the Feature.

The relationship typically starts with the Epic spawning multiple Features, Features spawning multiple Stories. A Feature may be delivered in one sprint, but normally takes about three to six sprints to complete. An Epic can be delivered in three to nine months.

Q:  How do you turn Epics into User Stories?

The Product Owner gets together with the Business Owners and team to decide all the Features of the Epic that they want delivered. Epics reside on a Program dashboard that offers program-delivered value.

In terms of value, this comes from minimal viable products (MVPs) that are provided by the delivery team, usually every two to four weeks. For example, first we deliver the automated Risk Log and then the automated PICL, while we are working on the Program dashboard in the background. Once every Feature is complete, the Epic is complete – and this is how we define total delivered value.

With Makpar’s Pragmatic Agile mathematical formula, the Epic is given a certain amount of business value based on proprietary information. The Features must add up to the value of the Epic. Feature-delivered value is based on the percent of stories delivered over the total amount of stories for the Feature.

Q: What makes Makpar’s Agile process unique?

To get accurate delivered value metrics, you must standardize on empirical knowledge, meaning you can prove it. At Makpar, what we do, at the lowest level, is standardize Story Points by using the Fibonacci Scale.

Once we standardize Story Points, every team uses the same standard to estimate their work. Once we have a standardized Velocity from each team, we know exactly how much work they can deliver in a certain amount of time. From there, we can do predictable planning, and determine when the teams will deliver the Epic. 

Stay tuned for our next installment in this series where the team will provide insights into enabling code simplicity in the Agile process.

Makpar is pioneering Pragmatic Agile development for government through methods such as Scrum, Kanban, and Lean development. Our Agile practice minimizes communication gaps between Development and Operations teams by expanding DevOps-based automation to the entire development lifecycle. Please click here to learn more.