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Zenhub epics add a crucial extra layer of hierarchy to your GitHub issues, providing greater control end-to-end over the release process

An overview of epics and their benefits

Epics are a theme of work that contains several sub-tasks or Issues. Epics are the best way to group related issues together into larger goals that span sprints (typically 2-6 weeks).

The concept stems from the agile principle that tasks should be broken down into small, manageable chunks; that way, you're able to ship impactful changes more often. In agile development, a “user story” is the smallest unit of work, and an epic is essentially a “big” user story. These are tended to give you a broad understanding of larger initiatives.

With epics, you can map out big chunks of work or goals, and then add all of the related issues to fully flesh it out. The completion of each related issue means that you are one step closer to achieving the overall epic. The scope of epics is flexible, so you can add, edit, and remove issues as needed. Once you've set up an epic, you can track it alongside your other work in your Zenhub Workspaces. You can also filter your Workspace by epic to track only those child issues. Switch over to the Roadmap view to visualize a live progress report for your epics.

Creating your very first epic

Now that you have an understanding of Epics, let's take a look at creating your first one!

To get started, head to your Zenhub board and select the + icon next to the New Issue button. From here you can choose to create an Epic. You can then give your Epic a title and description. By hitting the Create Epic button you can then begin adding Issues to your Epic

Adding issues to your epic

You can add issues to your epics by:

1. Quickly adding new Issues from the epic page

Select to view the epic on the Roadmap. You can select the + Add Issue icon located below the description to quickly capture scope requirements for the epic:

2. Use multi-action select on your Board by using the Select Issues from board feature

Select to view the epic on the Roadmap. You can select the + Add Issue icon located below the description. Next, click the Select Issues from board button, which will take you to the board.  To use multi-action, hover over the avatar for any issue card on the Board to select the issue. From here, you can select as many issues as you'd like and then perform updates to those issues at once. Choose the Set epic option to quickly add these issues to your epic:

3. Use multi-action select on your Board

To use multi-action, hover over the avatar for any issue card on the Board to select the issue. From here, you can select as many issues as you'd like and then perform updates to those issues at once. Choose the Set epic option to quickly add these issues to your epic:

You can also check out more on getting started with Epics here

Filtering the board by an epic

Once created, you'll see epics on your Roadmap.  But the most impactful part of epics isn’t creating them — it’s tracking them in an effective way. With Workspaces, you can view how epics fit into the big picture by seeing them alongside your other issues. By the same token, you can Filter by epic using the board filter at the top of the page to see only the issues inside it.

As you start to interact with issues, complete work, and go about daily activities such as stand-up or daily to-do planning, you can leverage the Board epic filter to drill down on story or project work within an epic to gain insight into how these epic issues are progressing. You can also switch over to the Roadmap view to get an at-a-glance progress report for your epics