http://www.kennethvr.be/blog/2011/07/28/scrum-and-scrum-roles/

I devided the roles in an overview following the story of pigs and chickens.

BUT the stakeholders see it as an exact plan with no +/-X%.

It’s similar to the concept where if a person says a task will take “about 2 weeks” versus “about 11 (business) days”, that stakeholders think the second estimate is a detailed estimate whilst the first is an order of magnitude.

The communication solution, that I’ve found that works best is to present the plan in a way that communicates the level of comfort with the assumptions. i.e. Use diagrams that show the phases of the projects with Month based headings, until you can comfortably state with a high level of confidence the exact date which you will finish.

Additionally, ensure that the assumptions and their associated risks and and known issues with the plan are given at least as much communication space as the plan itself.

We are developing an online risk management register (http://riskissue.com) for business, projects, teams and processes.

I’ll be reading your articles to determine, what extra functionality we need to include to suit an Agile method of development.

Neil

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