Talk about milestones, not epics

When we talk about “the thing we’re building,” we shouldn’t be talking about the epic, which takes months.

We should be talking about the next milestone, which takes maybe a couple weeks. That’s the goal, right now. That’s what we track progress against. That’s what we’re working on. The epic is just what you get by default at the end of all of the milestones.

Focusing on milestones means we ship something early and often, which means:

• We get early feedback from stakeholders (or maybe even users) and can adjust and iterate before it’s too late.
• We create energy and excitement in the team doing the work because we’re always “close to finishing”.
• We deliver value early and add more over time, as opposed to going from 0 to 100 at the very end.

But it has to be a mindset shift, and that starts with how we talk about it. So speak in milestones, not in epics.