Epic and Story Issue Type

[Tinker Fadoua]

Good evening members,

My apology for the late post, I am under the weather.

Today my question is the following: why is it so hard for people to understand Epic and Story Issue Type?

The discussion gets so intense around these two JIRA/Agile features that other questions get raised.

[Huey Callison]

In every place I've ever worked, problems with standardization of what a particular organization means by the terms 'epic' and 'story' comes down to poor documentation and training. An organization's data dictionary ought to start with first principles -- "What do we mean by 'epic'?" -- and that documentation ought to be available to anyone who goes to look for it, and presented both as part of new-hire training and later reinforcement.

Not everybody in the organization is going to be an agile development nerd, and it's unrealistic to expect them to be. 

[Tinker Fadoua]

Thank you @Huey Callison  for taking time to answer my question! I agree that people should invest some time reading about Epic and Story issue type online. Documentation is available for everyone. The hilarious part is when you explain it and they start arguing. I even heard that's how Atlassian defines it but how does it apply in our case?!!!!!!

Well let me tell you by using a Business Project and not willing to use Sprints, Sprint Planning,.... it doesn't apply to you at all period. I couldn't say it the way I just did because that was a discussion with a person from upper management who careless about Agile.

[Billy Poggi AUG NOVA_ DC]

I've seen similar confusion.  Sometimes it's just simple _over use_ of the terms, often interchanged with each other without support for why.  

When the topic comes up, I do my best to help people communicate by saying out loud, "what's our definition of Story vs Epic".  Which usually comes down to "in this sprint" or "in this spiral".