- 10.3 Overview of Features
- 10.4 Benefits of Feature Preparation
- 10.5 Feature Preparation Activities
- 10.6 Timing of Feature Preparation
- 10.7 Assessing Readiness
- 10.8 Accounting for Preparation Work: Tasks and Spikes
- 10.9 Specifying Features and Their Acceptance Criteria
- 12.4 MVP Planning
- 17.3 Why Do We Need a Scaled Agile Approach?
- 17.4 Planning: Choosing an Approach That Supports Inter-team Collaboration
- 17.8 Scaling the Agile Organization
- 18.6 Agile Corporate Culture
- 18.7 Overview of Principles and Practices for an Agile Corporate Culture
- 18.8 Three Principles for Applying Agile Practices
10.3 Overview of Features
Since we’re about to focus on features, let’s quickly review some fundamental concepts about them.
A feature is a product-level work item that can be completed by one or more teams within one quarter or release cycle. The feature may be expressed in the Connextra format—for example, “As a member, I want to receive messages and notifications so that I can respond to issues that require my immediate attention.”
A feature is bigger than a story but smaller than an epic. The relationships can be summarized as follows:
Epic > Feature > Story
Features often begin as epics. As we learned earlier, in Chapter 7, “Visioning,” an epic is a product-level work item that may require multiple teams over multiple quarters and may span product areas, business areas, and value streams. An example of an epic is the introduction of home delivery across a product line to increase sales revenues by 20 percent. Chapter 7 explains how to prepare an epic by articulating the epic vision and leap of faith hypotheses. It also explores the MVP process for determining the minimum marketable features (MMFs)—the high-value features to develop. The next step is to prepare the upcoming features. This chapter focuses on that preparation.