
Developing Epics For Product Owners – Part 2
Story-Writing Workshops
Another excellent method for collecting details about epics and user stories is to set up a workshop and invite along the users, the Scrum team, and any other relevant stakeholders. During the session, the attendees will brainstorm and provide their feedback on the list of requirements. By gathering everyone in one place like this, the time can be used productively to delve into the different aspects and nuances of the features in question, thereby allowing the Product Owner to elaborate on several user stories within a relatively short space of time.
Questionnaires
Questionnaires are useful when there is a large user population and a deeper level of detail is needed on user stories or epics that have already been defined. They should only be used as a means to further refine information that has already been collected, and not as the primary mechanism for gathering requirements.
Prototyping
A somewhat different technique that can be used to gather the specifications for a user story is prototyping. This involves creating a sample or model of what the feature will look like when it is complete. When this is produced and shown to the eventual users, what happens is that they are able to visualize the functionality in action in a much clearer way than simply talking about it. As a result, any flaws or misunderstandings are more easily pinpointed and ironed out, and there is a greater likelihood that the user story will be delivered smoothly and will meet expectations.
The Use of Personas
Personas are fictional characters that the Product Owner defines in detail to represent the characteristics and behaviors of different users. The purpose of these personas is to get a thorough understanding of what each user is trying to achieve when using the product that is being developed. These are then used within the user stories to clearly define who the requirement is referring to and what goal they are aiming to accomplish when using the feature being described.
Tracking Epics
Aside from having the initial benefit of allowing the broad capture of the requirement in the early stages, the grouping together of multiple user stories into epics has another advantage that comes into play later on, when the items within the epic begin to be placed into sprints and then completed and delivered. While developers and the Scrum team will mostly be concerned with user stories at the most granular level, the Product Owner as well as managers and other stakeholders will tend to be interested in when the epic will be delivered as a whole, since it is only after this phase is complete that the full business value will be achieved. Because of this, many of the agile management tools that are available have the ability to roll up the progress of the child user stories into the epic, and therefore give visibility and allow interested parties to monitor and measure the evolution of the product.
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Our Book Recommendations
We found these books great for finding out more information on Agile Scrum:
Master of Agile – Scrum Product Owner With 59 Seconds Agile (Video Training Course)
Introductory Offer: Free Course
What is this course?
This ‘Master of Agile – Scrum Product Owner With 59 Seconds Agile (Video Training Course)’ provides an in-depth understanding of the Scrum Product Owner roles and responsibilities
You will explore the Agile Scrum project life-cycle, including how an Agile User Story is created, to how we know when it is ‘done’
This course is aimed at those with or without prior knowledge and experience of the Agile values and principles
During this course you will learn the tools needed to succeed as a Scrum Product Owner
What will you learn?
You will gain an in-depth understanding of the Scrum Product Owner roles and responsibilities, and you will be able to
- Fully understand the role of the Scrum Product Owner
- Understand the roles involved in an Agile project
- Create an effective Product Backlog
- Effectively participate in Scrum Meetings such as the Daily Stand-up, Sprint Review and Retrospective
- Identify the roles involves in the Scrum Team

What topics are covered within this course?
You will cover the following topics during this course:
- An Introduction to Agile Project Management (Product Owner)
- The 12 Agile Principles (Product Owner)
- The Declaration of Interdependence (Product Owner)
- Introduction to Scrum (Product Owner)
- Scrum Project Roles (Product Owner)
- The Agile Project Life-cycle (Product Owner)
- Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog (Product Owner)
- Epics and Personas (Product Owner)
- Sprint Planning (Product Owner)
- User Stories (Product Owner)
- The Daily Scrum (Product Owner)
- The Product Backlog (Product Owner)
- Scrum Charts (Product Owner)
- Review and Retrospective (Product Owner)
- Validating a Sprint (Product Owner)
- Releasing the Product (Product Owner)