Epics and roadmap are two newer features in GitLab Ultimate and GitLab.com Gold. Used together, your team can plan and track larger initiatives. On September 22, we're shipping a new feature which we will help you transition seamlessly between top-down and bottom-up planning.
First things first: epics vs. issues vs. roadmap
An epic is similar to an issue in that it records a proposed scope of work to be done, allows for team members to discuss that scope, and then is tracked and updated over time as that work is actually implemented.
However, an epic exists at the group level (as opposed to an issue, which exists at the project level). So immediately you see that an epic is designed to reflect a larger scope, and higher level of discussion compared to an issue. Additionally, you can attach any number of issues to an epic, with the idea that the epic's scope decomposes into those individual issues.
Since an epic is designed to scope work over a longer period of time (several issues' worth), a timeline-based view in the form of a roadmap is also useful: it serves as a visualization to anticipate that work, and track it as it's progressively completed. So the roadmap, also scoped at the group level, presents all the epics in time for that group.
You can apply group labels to epics, making it easy to quickly narrow down to the epics you care about, whether you are looking at a list view or a roadmap view.
| Epics list | Roadmap |
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