## Summary Epics are a flexible tool to support the portfolio planning process. Regardless of your planning methodology, we think epics can be a critical part of your planning toolkit. However, our legacy epics architecture was built as a standalone object separate from other features like issues and requirements. Given this, we're inefficient with our development efforts of common widgets and limited in building scalable relational models. As part of our move to [work items](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/6033 "[INITIATIVE] Work Items") we will migrate the legacy epic features, related boards, views and data to the new architecture. For most features, we are conscious to not change the user’s mental model so the transition to the work items framework is not abrasive. For some features however, we must implement the feature in a new way due to the functional differences between the work items layout and the issuables layout. Additionally, there are some features which need UX improvement, like designs uploads. In this case, we will look for opportunities to improve known usability challenges as we build the feature on work items. Migrating epics to work items will unlock dozens of feature improvements and bug issues just by being on the shared work items framework. Notable improvements on day 1 will be assignees, milestones, and nesting that carries through to tasks which will allow for rolled up features like total weight of an epic. This epic will be used to track the work needed for epic migration. ## General Work Item Context Different object types require different fields and different context, depending on what job they are being used to accomplish. Instead of each object type diverging into a separate model, we can standardize on an underlying common model that we can customize with the widgets (one or more attributes) it contains. Epics, issues, requirements, and others all have similar but just subtle enough differences in common interactions that the user needs to hold a complicated mental model of how they each behave. Transitioning all three will provide a more efficient user experience. ### Epic id ref - id: 657742 - iid: 9290