Work Item Type: Epic

An Epic is a very large user story that is later broken down into smaller and more measurable stories. Epics are generally too large to be implemented in one Sprint and are difficult to measure due to their complexity.

The Epic work item type does not have story points. Instead, the Product Owner is responsible for breaking epics down into smaller user stories that can be estimated. The Product Owner is also responsible for setting the appropriate state of the Epic. The Product Owner can also assign a "Business Value", which is the importance of this Epic to the business stakeholders.

The Epic work item states are:

New: This is the state when first created.
In Progress: This can optionally be set if the Product Owner wants to keep track of which Epics have started being worked on.
Done: Set by the Product Owner when the Product Owner is satisified that all stories for the Epic have been successfully implemented and tested.
Invalid: Set by the Product Owner if the Epic should never be implemented.
Deferred: Recommend NOT using this state. This can be used by the Product Owner to indicate that this Epic is not expected to be implemented in any near-term release. However, the recommended approach is to instead assign the Epic to the product backlog.