After one quick read of the diagram and just off the top of my head, my reaction:

A Theme is a overriding, recurrent direction of events with a large magnitude, for example, “Continued Unemployment and It’s Impacts on Labor Markets”.

An Epic is a collection of stories, about events, that produce major impacts during a given period of time, for example, Homer’s works in the Iliad and Odessy.

A User Story is merely a tale recounting the experiences of an individual, through their own perceptions, of their participation in an Epic, with an overriding Theme.

A Task is simply an action a User may have taken during their own [User] story.

Thus, symbolically: Theme O O Epic -> User Story -> Task

O=Optional

In other words, Theme and Epic are fundamentally unrelated, only interrelated by their usage. Wide-spread unemployment may or may not have been present when Homer wrote his works ;>.

Perhaps a weakness in Agile in this regard however I interpret the diagram as accurate.

Cheers

I think we’re all agreed that an epic is a very large user story, however in my experience, *most* ‘very large’ stories can and should probably be broken down into smaller stories so as to minimise complexity.

With that said, you may choose not to release the individual stories until the full epic is ‘done’ – this is quite common.

Themes can be used at different levels of hierarchy and on multiple levels i.e. you may have themes within themes.

At the highest level, you’d probably want to ensure they’re aligned with your overall business objectives – they may span programmes or projects.

I guess the main point here is a theme is a grouping technique whereas epics and stories are actual deliverables… although a story could never be broken down into an epic.

Hope that makes sense and helps to clarify my thinking.

Tara

I’m also confused with the terms Theme and Epic. Initially I found that Epic would be the the large picture and the theme is the collection of related stories. However, at an interview that I attended, I was told the other way around. The theme is the top-level objective and Epic is the group of related stories. And that’s how they use it in the organisation also!

Hope someone can help to clarifying this.

Thanks,
Moo

Cohn describes a Theme as “a collection of related user stories” and an Epic as “a large user story.”

On this page, a Theme is “a top-level objective” and an Epic is “a group of related user stories.”

Any author for this page willing to re-assert their statement, or offer further explanation?

Thanks!
Jacque

see: http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/system/presentation/file/119/Cohn-ADP09-Introduction-to-User-Stories.pdf

We use for many years in our Product Backlog Breakdown Structure Epic, Theme and User Stories where theme is a collection of user stories around a functional area.

confusion persist…