Planning and tracking multiple epics

This is the flow of how users would use epics and issues to start planning work at a high-level many months, quarters, and even years in advance, and then progressively turn those plans into actionable, estimated, and scoped work. And then track that work as it is being executed.

The features needed to complete this flow are captured in the linked epics, and shown in this roadmap.

Step	Existing feature, issues	Visual
Product manager documents high-level ideas/strategic initiatives	Create new epics, update descriptions, add labels
Sets approximate far away timelines (e.g. H2 of next year)	Set fixed dates and view on roadmap
Engage with other stakeholders, product/design/engineering teams. Discuss feasibility and refine timeline estimates	Comment thread, @mentioning people, notifications, todos
Break down high-level ideas into smaller chunks. Start scoping out work	Create and add subepics and issues, &134 (closed), &312 (closed), &317 (closed), &316 (closed)
Estimate effort	Issue weights, &76
Plan scoped and effort-estimated work in milestones, accounting for available capacity.	Milestone lists with summed weights in boards with epic swimlanes, &328
Transition to bottoms-up planning for scoped, estimated, and scheduled work	Update epic dates inheriting issue milestones, &227 (closed)
View plan in roadmap	Roadmap view showing milestones, &329 (closed)
Track progress on epic	Same as Estimate effort above	Same as Estimate effort above
Track progress on roadmap	Same as Estimate effort above	Same as Estimate effort above
Track delays on epic and roadmap	https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/7372
Finish initiative	Close / autoclose epics, &145 (closed), &327 (closed)