6 min read

Guide

Who can use this feature:

Available on monday dev

The monday dev "Epics" board is a clear and detailed way to oversee the progress and development of your epics. Not only is it a crucial tool to be used within your dev team, but it's also a great way to communicate milestones with other internal teams as well as external stakeholders. We want to take you through how to utilize monday dev's epic planning board to get started with your high-level feature management. Let's check it out!

What is an epics roadmap?

A product roadmap is a roadmap used by product managers to describe upcoming features in the pipeline. It can display major feature goals and desired outcomes as well as an anticipated completion date. Essentially, a roadmap is a high-level outline of your epics. It lays out the goals and milestones of your epics and includes details such as timelines and story points that are directly connected to each sprint within the epic.

Map out your epics

The roadmap is organized into groups representing yearly quarters according to when each epic is scheduled to be completed as well as a backlog to see what will be worked on next.

Each item in the board is an individual epic, which is broken down and further organized using the columns added to the board. The columns give our epics structure and ensure that all of the crucial information is provided, including the epic owner, a description and timeline of the epic, the prioritization of each feature, and an overview of mirrored sprints.

Tell me more about the columns on my roadmap board

Check out the columns we've added to this board, and how we think you can utilize them to their fullest potential:

Epic Owner: This People Column is used to assign the team member responsible for the epic, to create accountability and a person of contact for any questions or collaboration.
Description: You can fill in a quick description of the feature and what work is planned in this Long Text Column.
Planned Timeline: The Timeline Column is used here to select the exact dates dedicated to this feature.
Priority: By using priority labels in a Status Column, your team can rank the urgency of each project, which will help your team prioritize if the need for unexpected changes arises.
Epic Status Use this Status Column to update the working status of your epic.
Epic - Planned Q: Use this Status Column to select a label determining within which quarter this epic will be worked on.
Tasks: This column connects the epics in your board to the items in your Tasks board so that you can see a list of all the details involved with each of your epics.
Tasks Progress: Here, you can see the working status of your sprints mirrored from your Tasks board.
Estimated SP: This column calculates the estimated number of story points for this epic by mirroring the sum of the story points outlined from your Tasks board.
Actual SP: This is where you can see the actual number of story points for this epic, mirrored from your Tasks board.
Execution Timeline: Keep an eye on the time it takes to complete the tasks in your epics, mirrored from your Tasks board.

Connect your tasks

The "Epics" feature roadmap is an important puzzle piece in your monday dev product. It works together with your tasks board to put everything in perspective and chronology. While the roadmap functions as a high-level overview, giving the big picture of your team's epics, the tasks drill down into all the details so that you can see exactly what you need to when you need to.

Using the Connect Boards Column, we've linked your roadmap board to your tasks board! In each cell of the "Tasks" column, you can see all of the relevant sprints connected to each epic for a comprehensive breakdown of tasks involved.

The following 5 columns mirror data from the tasks board including the working status, estimated story points, and actual story points of the linked tasks.

Tip: Check out this tutorial to see how to connect items in your tasks board to items in your roadmap board.

Visualize your epics with Gantt

The Main Table View of your board lays out the details and organization of your roadmap, but we've zoomed out to let you see your epics in Gantt format as well. The Gantt View gives you a visual translation of the items on your board so you see everything that needs to be done in the context of a timeline.

Keep things moving automatically

We know you're busy and we want this board to save you time, not create extra administrative tasks. This is why we've automated the flow of the items throughout your board!

Whenever a new item is labeled with the Q it will be tackled in, or the Q changes along the way, automations kick in to move the item to the appropriate group in your board. This assures that the items in your board are always grouped chronologically, and you don't have to drag them around manually to organize your roadmap.

In addition, we've added an automation to assign the item creator as the owner in the "Epic Owner" column, and a reminder to the Epic Owner two months before a deadline arrives.