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:

Example set of relationships:

Epics and issuesHow issues and child epics relate to parent epics and lateral relationships to work items
contains
contains
contains
contains
blocked by
blocking
related
blocked by
Parent_epic
Issue1
Child_epic
Issue2
Task
Objective
Key Result

Child issues from different group hierarchies

History

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.