In Story Mapping, epics represent what?

• A. End-user tasks
• B. Large stories representing responsibilities
• C. Small tasks
• D. The backbone themes

Answer: (B)

Epics in Story Mapping are large, high-level pieces of work that capture broad functionality and the responsibilities the system must support. They sit above the fine-grained user stories and group related stories that together deliver a major capability. By decomposing an epic into smaller stories, you can map out incomplete parts of a feature while keeping sight of the overall responsibility it fulfills. This is why the correct view is that epics represent large stories representing responsibilities. End-user tasks are typically what individual stories or tasks convey, not the broad, umbrella work that an epic represents; the backbone shows the sequence of activities, while epics describe the sizable chunks of work behind those activities.