Skip to content

Epics

  • Tier: Premium, Ultimate
  • Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated

Epics in GitLab coordinate and track large initiatives by organizing work items into a work hierarchy. Epics make complex projects manageable. They:

  • Break down large features into smaller deliverables that add incremental value.
  • Track the progress of related work items with scheduled start and end dates.
  • Organize discussions and decisions about feature scope and requirements.
  • Create hierarchical structures that connect tasks to strategic goals.
  • Build visual roadmaps to monitor progress toward objectives.

Teams use epics to coordinate across multiple iterations and track progress toward long-term goals.

In the Ultimate tier, nested epics provide additional structure through work hierarchies that align with agile frameworks. Break down complex projects into more manageable child epics, which can further contain their own sets of issues and tasks. This nested structure helps maintain clarity and ensures all aspects of a project are covered without losing sight of the overarching goals.

Relationships between epics and other items

The possible relationships between epics and other items are:

  • An epic is the parent of one or more issues.
  • An epic is the parent of one or more child epics. Ultimate only.
  • An epic is linked to one or more task, objective, or key result. Your administrator must have enabled the new look for epics.

Example set of relationships:


%%{init: { "fontFamily": "GitLab Sans" }}%%
graph TD
    accTitle: Epics and issues
    accDescr: How issues and child epics relate to parent epics and lateral relationships to work items

    %% Main structure %%
    Parent_epic -->|contains| Issue1
    Parent_epic -->|contains| Child_epic
    Child_epic -->|contains| Issue2

    %% Additional work items and lateral relationships %%
    Issue1 -- contains --> Task1["Task"]
    Issue2 -- "blocked by" --> Objective1["Objective"]
    Task1 -- blocking --> KeyResult1["Key Result"]

    %% Work items linked to epics and issues %%
    Parent_epic -. related .- Objective1
    Child_epic -. "blocked by" .- KeyResult1

Child issues from different group hierarchies

Version history

  • Introduced in GitLab 15.5 with a flag named epic_issues_from_different_hierarchies. Disabled by default.
  • Enabled on GitLab.com in GitLab 15.5.
  • Feature flag epic_issues_from_different_hierarchies removed in GitLab 15.6.

You can add issues from a different group hierarchy to an epic. To do it, paste the issue URL when adding an existing issue.

Roadmap in epics

  • Tier: Ultimate
  • Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated

If your epic contains one or more child epics that have a start or due date, you can go to a roadmap of the child epics from the epic.

Child epics roadmap

If your administrator enabled the new look for epics:

  • On the Child items section header, select More actions ({ellipsis_v}) > View on a roadmap.

A roadmap filtered for the parent epic opens.

Related topics