session · shaping
Epic kickoff
60 to 90 minutes. Trio plus designer. The Epic is named after what the named person does — "grade an exam," not "grading system." Candidate stories sketched. The artefact the next several amigos sessions build on.
When
- At the start of each Epic within an active initiative.
- Before any story under the Epic enters refinement. Stories without a kicked-off Epic have no centre of gravity.
Who
- PO — facilitates. Brings the Feature Brief and the Initiative Brief.
- Tech Lead — names the technical shape; sketches sequence/schema if needed.
- Designer — names the surface; sketches the flow.
- (Optional) QA if the Epic's risk profile warrants — usually for high-state-count Epics.
Time-box
60–90 minutes. Shorter and the candidate stories are skeletal; longer and the room drifts into refinement.
Inputs
- The Feature Brief (signed).
- The Initiative Brief's "What we have NOT yet witnessed" section.
- The observation note for the moment this Epic addresses.
Agenda
| Time | What |
|---|---|
| 0–10 min | Read the Feature Brief aloud. Specifically the experience snapshot and prediction. Everyone hears the same starting point. |
| 10–25 min | Name the Epic. In the named person's verb form. "Grade an exam." Reject anything system-shaped ("Grading service"). |
| 25–55 min | Sketch candidate stories. Decompose the activity into 5–9 small stories — each something the named person does. Per story: one-line description, rough fit (S/M/L). |
| 55–75 min | Sketch the journey. Tech Lead drafts a sequence sketch — services touched, contracts implied. Designer sketches the flow — nodes named with states. |
| 75–85 min | Slicing. Which stories ship first? Which test the Epic's prediction? Which can defer? (See Slicing & Prioritization.) |
| 85–90 min | Open questions and dependencies. What we don't know; what we need from elsewhere. |
Outputs
- Epic name — in named-person verb form.
- Candidate story list — 5–9 stories with rough size.
- Slicing plan — what's in release 1, what defers, with reasons.
- Sketches — sequence and flow, signed by Tech Lead and Designer respectively.
- Open questions — owned, each with a path to closure (spike, brief refresh, design exploration).
What good looks like
A developer who wasn't in the room can read the Epic name and the candidate story list and know what activity this Epic shapes without asking. The sketches are legible and minimal — enough to amigos, not enough to ship.
The trio's three angles converge. Tech Lead's sequence and Designer's flow agree on where each story sits. Disagreements surface in this session, not in PR review.
Anti-pattern
The Epic gets named as a system noun — "Grading backend" — and decomposes into infrastructure stories. The named person disappears from the work. Fix: the Epic name is the verb the person uses for what they do. The decomposition follows.
A second anti-pattern: shaping the stories during the kickoff. Stories get refined in Story refinement and Gherkin'd in Amigos. The kickoff sketches candidates; deeper detail comes later.
See also
- Canon — What We Build · Epic Naming & Kickoff
- Area — Epic Naming & Kickoff
- Template — Story (what candidate stories grow into)
- Next session — Story refinement, then Amigos session