The Theme / Epic Structure provides the ability to graphically identify a hierarchy of an optional high level theme and /or epic and depicts the user stories within that hierarchy.

A Theme is a collection of user stories. A Scrum epic is a large user story.

Collections of User Stories such as grouping of development work that logically goes together within a Sprint or Release (e.g. Collections of User Stories that affect the GUI design, database design, or implement core business logic or process).

Two versions of the Theme / Epic Structure are provided in the package - this document in Excel and one in Visio, as some organizations prefer to work in Excel, while the Visio version facilitates ease of "drag and drop" to move/copy objects within the document.

Note the title (in braces) of the artifact. Revise the title to specify whether theme or epic and the name of the theme or epic this illustration identifies.

If you are identifying only an Epic, then delete the row entitled “Theme,“ and delete the cells associated with the second occurrence of “Epic Name.“

Scroll down to the Agile Theme / Epic Structure (Excel) example below.