4. Elements

In Agile, work is broken down into Elements which get ever more detailed. During the overall process, the team starts with a high level of Elements, without much detail, and as more and more information is collected the work is described in more detailed Elements. In this chapter, we will describe a typical set of such Elements describing work: the Goal, Epics, Items and Tasks.

The granularity also reflects what can be done within a certain timeframe. With the Goal being for the whole project, Epics usually need more than one Sprint, Items can typically be finished within a Sprint and a Task should not take longer than a day. While each project should have a clear Goal, the level on which the actual work sits depends on the expected duration of the work involved in executing the Element. Whilst an Element might start as an Epic during its lifetime, it will become increasingly specified. We will explain the Elements of the specification throughout this chapter.

To bring this to a more general level, there will be Elements that are rough ideas that cannot be executed (yet), and you may not yet have the time to deal with the details of them (e.g. re-branding strategy), but you still note them for future use. This helps to plan for a longer term and keep track of ideas.

When a new task comes in, you always ask yourself the question: Do I have all the information I need to execute the work? This is closely linked to the specific properties of the Elements we go into detail below.

Note that different naming conventions exist, both depending on frameworks and tooling used. The principles remain the same, irrespective of that.