Smaller than Epics please.
If an interim delivery takes too long, customers and teams want small, manageable pieces that also adhere to a timebox, as dictated by the Agile cycle.
Epics are bigger than a sprint, but often bigger than a stage. You initially have no time box (sprint, stage).
That’s why epics are cut into features, which then form suitable pieces for a stage and in turn represent the path to an epic.
Please keep pace.
Many large projects have a quarterly rhythm, the stages or product increments (PI). But what exactly do we deliver at the end of a stage or PI?
Features give us the means to describe what we will show the customer and ourselves so that we regularly receive good feedback. In this way, we continue to remain unerringly on the path to the meaning and goal of the overall product.
Being verifiable is valuable.
The term feature means “property“. We use features to focus on functions or components of the product at a stage.
The trick now is to find those features that best show the maturity level in one stage, but are also feasible and verifiable (testable). Not an easy task.
The effort is worth it.
Cutting and describing good features takes practice. But the effort is worth it. From these features we can collect valuable insights that allow us to project the future.
We recognize whether our overall product, i.e. our system, will work. Everyone is guaranteed to be interested in this.