Each of the following Scenarios can be used to determine if now is the right time for you to conduct an Epics & Capabilities Workshop.
Portfolio Level Planning: Your organization is aligning around long-term strategic goals, and leadership needs to identify which Epics should be prioritized for investment. An Epics & Capabilities Workshop helps translate strategy into actionable work by evaluating and prioritizing large-scale initiatives across value streams.
Capability Mapping Across ARTs: Multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs) need to collaborate on delivering cross-cutting solutions. This workshop helps define and align Capabilities that span teams, ensuring dependencies are identified early and delivery is coordinated across the program.
Solution Intent Definition: A new solution or platform is being developed, and the high-level intent is clear—but the delivery path is not. The Epics & Capabilities Workshop helps break down the solution into manageable Epics and Capabilities, providing structure and clarity for downstream planning and execution.
Backlog Rationalization: You have a growing list of large, unstructured backlog items that vary in scope and strategic alignment. This workshop helps categorize them into Epics and Capabilities, assess their value, and prioritize them based on business impact and feasibility.
Backlog – a list of Epics that need to be prioritized.
Subject Matter Expertise – The right people who understand the strategic context and scope of the Epics and Capabilities, and who can provide informed input on their potential business value, technical complexity, risks, dependencies, and alignment with enterprise goals.
Facilitator: takes an unbiased approach to the workshop, ensuring collaboration, clarifying scores and applying criteria consistently to each item in the list. Typically a Release Train Engineer, a Portfolio Manager, a Scrum Master, or someone equipped in leadership facilitates the Epics & Capabilities Workshop.
Pro-Tip: Having a Leader or Individual Contributor, who is really close to the work, facilitate the workshop can result in conflict and a biased outcome. Look for someone outside of the work to facilitate, especially for the first time.
Product Manager/Product Owner: provides clear business context and value insights for each item. This context can help stakeholders accurately assess business value, urgency, and safer/better components for delay cost.
Pro-Tip: Product Owners should focus on what is being built and why, not necessarily on how. While their input on business value is absolutely critical, be sure to get IT and Architecture’s input on the level of effort.
Key Stakeholders: bring domain knowledge, strategic priorities, and unique/critical perspectives to help determine the components of Delay Cost and Effort. These stakeholders, when included in the process, will not only feel included in the work, but may become champions and emissaries of the process for many years to come.
Pro-Tip: Determining the right Key Stakeholders is critical. Look for influencers, Leadership Partners, and those that will be most familiar with the items in the list to prioritize.
Subject Matter Experts: provide clarifying details on specific items in the list, ensuring the item is well-understood by everyone involved. They often provide business impact, dependencies, and technical feasibility.
Enterprise Architect: provides technical oversight into architectural dependencies, future enablement, and long-term scalability, helping ensure that prioritization decisions align with the organization’s technical strategy.
NOTE: Recommended Headcount: 8-15 people. Including additional people typically slows down the process without significantly improving the relative scoring and outcomes of the WSJF Workshop.
An Epics & Capabilities Workshop should be conducted when there is a need to define, refine, or align large-scale solution intent across teams and stakeholders. This workshop helps ensure that strategic initiatives are broken down into actionable, value-driven work items before prioritization or PI Planning.
Key times to consider an Epics & Capabilities Workshop for large programs and portfolios:
An Epics & Capabilities Workshop should be held 2 to 4 weeks before PI Planning to ensure high-priority items are well-defined, technically feasible, and aligned with business goals. This lead time allows for proper refinement, estimation, and preparation for prioritization and backlog readiness.
If you are a consultant, understanding the amount of effort to conduct an Epics & Capabilities session might inform how much time you reserve, and how much you charge for it. For those of you that do Value-Based contracts, the value the company receives from an Epics & Capabilities session will vary considerably.
For organizations, working on the wrong item first can be quite expensive, and struggling to make a decision on where to start can be even more costly.
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