For beginners in the Agile world, Azure DevOps Work items might sound a little confusing. This article will explain what they are and their differences.

The work items represent the core of the Azure DevOps tracking system and can be a bug, a requirement, a general to-do, and so on.

Each work item has a unique ID to keep track of its references from its creation to its implementation as a piece of executable software.

There are several types of working item:

• Epic (Basic, Agile, Scrum, and CMMI)
• Feature (Agile, Scrum, and CMMI)
• User Story (Agile), Product backlog item (Scrum), Requirement (CMMI)
• Task (Basic, Agile, Scrum, and CMMI)
• Impediment (Scrum), Issue (Agile and Basic)
• Bug (Agile, Scrum, and CMMI)

While epics and features reflect the business focus, user stories and tasks are related to the development.

Portfolio level

Epic

An Epic is a large user story that is so big that it is impossible to estimate its effort or even a user story that is too large to fit into a single sprint. Usually, it represents a business initiative to be accomplished, and it’s available in Basic, Agile, Scrum, and CMMI process templates.

Some examples are:

• Increase customer engagement
• Improve and simplify the user experience
• Implement new architecture to improve performance
• Engineer the application to support future growth
• Support integration with external services
• Support mobile apps

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