How to Create an Epic in Jira: 7 Steps for Better Planning

Struggling to manage scattered Jira work? Learn how to create epic in Jira in 7 steps to plan better, align priorities, and track progress. Read now!

Large Jira projects can become confusing when related work sits in scattered stories, tasks, and bugs. Teams may complete individual tickets while losing sight of the bigger product goal.

That confusion creates duplicate work, missed dependencies, unclear priorities, and reports that tell you what happened without explaining why. Stakeholders ask for progress, while the team spends time assembling updates manually.

But here's the truth: a well-planned epic can turn a broad initiative into a visible, manageable path. I’ll show you how to create an epic in Jira, what to include, and how to keep it useful throughout delivery.

How to Create an Epic in Jira: 7 Practical Steps

An epic is a large body of work that groups related stories, tasks, and bugs around one meaningful outcome. Use these seven steps to create one that supports planning instead of adding another layer of administration.

1. Clarify the outcome before opening Jira

Start with the result you want to achieve. An epic should describe a meaningful product, customer, or business outcome rather than a long list of activities.

For example, “Improve checkout” is broad but useful. “Add three new buttons” describes an activity and may not explain the real reason behind the work.

Write a short outcome statement first: “Reduce checkout abandonment by making payment faster and clearer.” This gives every related ticket a shared direction.
2. Choose the right Jira project

Jira organizes work inside projects, so select the project that owns the initiative. Check the project name, key, workflow, and permission settings before creating the epic.

You might be wondering: what if several teams contribute to one initiative? Choose the project responsible for the primary outcome, then coordinate connected work through links, shared labels, or cross-project planning.

Creating the epic in the wrong project can hide it from the people who need to plan, update, and report on it.
3. Open the epic creation screen

Jira offers several ways to create an epic, depending on your project configuration and interface.
- Open the project’s backlog and find the epic panel.
- Choose the option to create an epic.
- Use the global create button and select the epic issue type.
- Open the board or planning view if your team manages epics there.
Let me explain: the labels and placement can differ between company-managed and team-managed projects. If you cannot see the epic type, ask a Jira administrator to check the project configuration.
4. Add a clear epic name and summary

Use a short name that people can recognize in a backlog, roadmap, or report. “Checkout experience improvement” is easier to scan than “Q3 initiative for improving the full customer purchase journey.”

Then add a summary that explains the purpose, expected result, and boundaries. A useful summary might include:
- The customer or team problem.
- The outcome you want.
- The main area affected.
- Important limits or exclusions.
Keep the wording specific enough to guide decisions. Avoid names such as “Project Phoenix” unless everyone already knows what the label means.
5. Complete the important epic fields

Jira may show fields such as description, owner, priority, labels, start date, target date, and team assignment. Complete the fields that help people make decisions.

At minimum, include the following:
- Owner: The person responsible for keeping the epic current.
- Priority: Its relative importance compared with other initiatives.
- Target timing: The expected delivery window.
- Success measure: The signal that shows whether the outcome was achieved.
- Scope notes: What belongs inside and outside the epic.
Do not invent precision you do not have. A target quarter can be more honest and useful than an unverified delivery date.
6. Break the epic into stories, tasks, and bugs

After saving the epic, identify the smaller pieces needed to reach the outcome. Each child issue should represent work that a team can estimate, assign, and complete.

For a checkout improvement epic, child issues might include:
- Research payment drop-off points.
- Design a shorter payment form.
- Add an alternative payment method.
- Improve error messages.
- Track completion and abandonment events.
- Run an accessibility review.
Here's why: a strong epic connects strategy with execution. If a child issue cannot be tied to the outcome, it may belong elsewhere or need clearer justification.
7. Review progress and close the epic properly

Creating the epic is only the beginning. Review its child issues during planning, sprint reviews, and stakeholder updates.

Watch for blocked work, new scope, unresolved dependencies, and changes to the expected outcome. Update the epic when the plan changes instead of allowing outdated details to guide decisions.

Close the epic when the intended outcome is delivered or the initiative is formally stopped. Before closing it, confirm that important child issues are complete, cancelled, or deliberately moved.

What to Include in an Effective Jira Epic

The best epics answer five practical questions: why does this work matter, who owns it, what belongs inside it, how will progress be measured, and when should it finish?

A useful description might look like this:

Problem: Customers abandon checkout when payment errors are unclear.
Objective: Make payment completion faster and easier to understand.
Scope: Payment form, error messages, alternative payment methods, and event tracking.
Success measure: Lower abandonment and fewer payment-related support requests.
Owner: Product manager for the purchase experience.
Target: Planned for the second quarter.

The best part? This structure gives engineers, designers, product managers, and leaders the same point of reference.

Write the epic around an outcome

Compare “Build notification settings page” with “Give customers control over notification preferences.” The second wording leaves room for discovery while keeping the intended result visible.

Outcome-focused language also helps when the plan changes. Your team may replace a page with a simpler control, but the epic can remain relevant.

Set boundaries early

Scope boundaries prevent an epic from becoming a container for every related request. State which channels, customers, platforms, or regions are included.

For example, a mobile checkout epic may exclude desktop changes. That boundary helps reviewers decide whether a new request belongs in the current effort.

How to Organize Child Issues Under an Epic

Child issues should form a credible path toward the epic outcome. They do not need identical sizes, but each should have a clear purpose and completion condition.

Use a simple decomposition test

Ask three questions for every proposed issue:

What part of the outcome does this support?
Can a team estimate and deliver it?
How will someone know it is complete?

If an issue fails one question, refine it before adding it. “Improve performance” needs more detail, while “Reduce product page load time below two seconds on supported mobile devices” is easier to evaluate.

Separate discovery from delivery

Some epic work reduces uncertainty before implementation begins. Research, technical investigation, design validation, and prototype testing may all belong in early child issues.

Label these activities clearly so stakeholders understand that progress may involve learning before visible product changes appear.

Group work by meaningful slices

A team can organize child issues by customer journey, platform, capability, or delivery stage. Choose the approach that makes progress easiest to understand.

For an account security epic, useful slices could include password reset, multi-factor authentication, suspicious-login alerts, and recovery support.

How to Track Epic Progress in Jira

Jira can show epic progress through backlog views, boards, roadmaps, reports, and issue relationships. Each view answers a different planning question.

Planning question	Useful Jira view or practice
What work belongs to this epic?	Epic panel, issue details, and linked child issues
What is the team doing now?	Board view and active sprint view
What remains?	Epic progress indicators and backlog filters
What may delay delivery?	Blocked status, issue links, and dependency reviews
When might the work finish?	Roadmap planning and velocity-based forecasts

Progress percentages can mislead when issues vary greatly in size. Completing nine small tasks does not always mean an epic is nearly finished.

Pair issue progress with scope, risk, remaining effort, and outcome measures. A team may have completed most tickets while still waiting for one critical integration.

Use consistent status definitions

Agree on what “in progress,” “blocked,” “ready for review,” and “done” mean. Without shared definitions, two teams may report the same status differently.

For example, define “done” as reviewed, tested, released, and monitored when the epic concerns a live product change.

Review scope changes openly

Epic scope often changes after research or customer feedback. Record the reason, impact, and decision owner when work is added or removed.

This practice helps you distinguish healthy refinement from uncontrolled expansion.

Common Mistakes When Creating Jira Epics

Many epic problems come from planning habits rather than Jira itself. Recognizing them early can save weeks of confusion.

Making the epic too broad

An epic such as “Improve the entire platform” may contain dozens of unrelated outcomes. Split it into focused initiatives that a team can plan and review.

Making the epic too small

“Change the button color” is usually a task or story, not an epic. If the work can be completed by one small team within a short cycle, use a smaller issue type.

Leaving ownership unclear

When nobody maintains the epic, dates become outdated and new work enters without review. Assign one accountable owner, even when several teams contribute.

Creating child issues without context

A list of tickets does not automatically create a plan. Each issue should explain its relationship to the intended outcome.

Closing the epic when tickets are closed

Issue completion and outcome achievement are related but different. Confirm that the change works as intended before closing the initiative.

A Practical Alternative for Epic-Based Planning: ONES.com

ONES.com combines project management and knowledge management in one platform. ONES Project supports Jira-compatible workflows, while ONES Wiki provides a connected knowledge base.

ONES.com product screenshot

For teams comparing Jira alternatives, ONES.com can reduce the need to coordinate separate tools, especially when planning, delivery, reporting, and team guidance need to stay connected.

Value Proposition

ONES.com helps teams turn broad initiatives into structured work with connected planning and team knowledge. You can use its cloud or self-hosted deployments, including on-premise, private cloud, and air-gapped environments.

Core Capabilities

1. Epic planning without scattered context

Pain: Epic goals, child issues, and planning notes often sit in different places.

ONES capability: ONES Project combines work items, custom fields, workflows, and planning views.

Result: Teams can review the goal and execution path together.

2. Jira-compatible workflows

Pain: Teams may understand Jira workflows but hesitate to change platforms.

ONES capability: ONES Project supports Jira-compatible workflows and familiar project structures.

Result: Teams can evaluate a Jira alternative without rebuilding every planning habit from scratch.

3. Fewer plugin dependencies

Pain: Extra plugins can create maintenance work, permission issues, and inconsistent reporting.

ONES capability: ONES Project includes custom workflows, custom fields, sprint management, automation, and built-in reporting.

Result: Core planning needs can stay within one project management environment.

4. Built-in reporting

Pain: Manual progress updates can delay decisions and hide delivery risks.

ONES capability: Built-in reporting helps teams review sprint activity, progress, workload, and delivery trends.

Result: Managers can spot problems earlier and discuss evidence during reviews.

5. Self-hosted deployment choices

Pain: Some organizations cannot place project information in a public cloud environment.

ONES capability: ONES.com supports cloud, on-premise, private cloud, and air-gapped deployment options.

Result: Teams can select an operating model that matches security and network requirements.

6. Consistent features across deployment types

Pain: Self-hosted software sometimes lacks capabilities available in hosted plans.

ONES capability: ONES.com provides full feature parity between its cloud and self-hosted versions.

Result: Deployment decisions do not require giving up core planning functionality.

7. Connected project and knowledge management

Pain: Epic decisions and delivery work can become disconnected from team guidance.

ONES capability: ONES.com includes ONES Project for project management and ONES Wiki for knowledge management. They are sold separately.

Result: Teams can connect execution with planning guidance when both products fit their operating model.

8. Low-risk initial adoption

Pain: Teams may need time to assess whether a platform fits their planning process.

ONES capability: The free plan supports up to 30 seats.

Result: A small team can test epic planning and reporting before expanding adoption.

Application Scenarios

Product development team: A software team can create an epic for a new billing experience, break it into stories, and use sprint management to track delivery.

Regulated organization: A team with restricted network requirements can run project management in an air-gapped environment while keeping its workflow and reporting capabilities.

Growing product organization: A company moving away from multiple plugins can use custom fields, automation, and built-in reporting within ONES Project.

Common Challenges and Practical Solutions

Challenge: The epic has no measurable outcome

Solution: Add one or two indicators that connect delivery to value. For a search improvement epic, track successful searches, refinement use, or support requests.

Challenge: Work belongs to several teams

Solution: Assign one epic owner and define each team’s responsibility. Use issue links or shared planning conventions for dependencies.

Challenge: The epic keeps expanding

Solution: Review every new request against the original outcome. Move useful but unrelated work into a separate epic.

Challenge: Stakeholders cannot understand progress

Solution: Replace technical status updates with a short summary of completed outcomes, remaining work, risks, and decisions needed.

Challenge: The epic remains open after delivery

Solution: Add a closure checklist covering release, validation, monitoring, unresolved follow-up, and stakeholder approval.

FAQs About Creating Jira Epics

What is the difference between an epic and a story in Jira?

An epic represents a larger body of work that usually contains several stories, tasks, or bugs. A story describes a smaller piece of value that a team can plan and deliver within a shorter cycle.

For example, “Launch self-service returns” could be an epic. “Add a returns button to the order page” could be one story inside it.

Can one Jira epic contain work from multiple teams?

Yes. One epic can bring together work from several teams when everyone contributes to the same outcome. Assign a clear owner and define each team’s responsibility.

Also review dependencies carefully. A shared epic becomes difficult to manage when teams use different status meanings or delivery assumptions.

How many stories should an epic contain?

There is no universal number. The right size depends on the outcome, team structure, and delivery horizon.

If an epic contains only one small story, it may be too small. If it includes dozens of unrelated initiatives, split it into focused epics. A useful epic is large enough to matter and focused enough to manage.

Should an epic have a deadline?

An epic should usually have a target window, but the level of precision depends on planning confidence. Use a target quarter when the work is still being explored.

Add a more specific date after scope, dependencies, and capacity become clearer. Review the target whenever those conditions change.

Can I create an epic from the Jira backlog?

In many Jira configurations, you can create an epic directly from the backlog’s epic panel. You may also use the global create option or a project planning view.

The exact location depends on your Jira project type and permissions. If the epic option is missing, ask an administrator to review the project setup.

Backlog product screenshot

Conclusion

Creating an epic in Jira starts with a clear outcome, the right project, and a focused scope. Then you add useful fields, connect meaningful child issues, review progress, and close the work based on results.

But here's the truth: an epic is valuable only when it helps people make better decisions. A polished title cannot replace ownership, measurable success, and regular review.

Use the seven-step process for your next initiative. If your team needs a Jira alternative with built-in reporting, customizable workflows, self-hosted deployment options, and connected planning capabilities, ONES.com is worth evaluating.