Product work exists at multiple levels of granularity, from the highest-level vision down to individual tasks. Understanding this hierarchy helps teams maintain perspective and ensure that daily work connects to strategic goals:
- Product vision sits at the top and describes the long-term aspiration for what the product will become and the impact it will have on users and the business.
- Epics. Each initiative breaks down into multiple epics, which are large bodies of work that deliver specific value to users. An epic might be "improve onboarding experience" or "add collaboration features." These epics typically take several sprints to complete.
- User stories. Below epics, we find user stories that describe specific functionality from users’ perspective. A story within the onboarding epic might be "as a new user, I want to import my data from my previous tool so I can start using the product immediately."
- Tasks. Stories are usually decomposed into tasks, sometimes also called work items, which capture the technical steps needed to deliver the story. This might include “create API endpoint for data import” or “design import confirmation screen."
This hierarchy ensures that every piece of work connects back to strategic objectives.[1]
