Epics, User Stories, Tasks, and Sub-Tasks

Understanding The Work Item Hierarchy

Every work item has a "Type", and the default type is set as a Task. 

Here are all of the different options for work time "Type":

• Epic
• User Story
• Task
• Sub-Task
• Defect
• Support Ticket
• Spike

You have the ability to nest work items if you want to break a large item of work in to several smaller components. The option most people are familiar with is to break a Task in to Sub-Tasks. On Ravetree you have the ability to create up to 4 levels of nesting. This can be accomplished by taking advantage of "Epics" and "User Stories". Think of an Epic as the largest unit of work within a project. If your work item type is an Epic, then you can create child work items inside the Epic, which are called "User Stories". Likewise, a User Story can have child work items called Tasks, and Tasks can have child work items called Sub-Tasks. Schematically, it looks like this:

• Epic
  • User Story
    • Task
    • Sub-Task

In Ravetree it will look something like this:

Notice that the top-most work item is an Epic, with one nested User Story. The User Story has two nested Tasks, one of which has to nested Sub-Tasks. It's important to note that the highest level work item does not have to be an Epic. It could be a User Story or Task, however, a Sub-Task can always has to have a parent Task.