Initiative
Definition
An initiative is the highest level of the agile work hierarchy — a large, strategic business goal that spans multiple epics, multiple teams, and potentially an entire year, representing a meaningful outcome the organization is committing to achieve.
Not every agile team uses the initiative layer, but organizations working at scale — with multiple Scrum teams, SAFe implementations, or long-range product roadmaps — typically need it. Initiatives bridge the gap between company strategy ("expand into the enterprise market") and executable epics ("build SSO integration," "add audit logging," "build admin console").
Where initiatives fit:
- Initiative: multi-team, multi-quarter business objective
- Epic: significant feature, typically one team, one to two months
- User story: sprint-sized work, one to two weeks
What defines an initiative:
- It represents a business outcome, not a product feature.
- Multiple epics must be completed to achieve it.
- It often crosses team boundaries — requiring coordination between engineering, product, design, and sometimes sales or marketing.
- Success is measurable: an initiative should have a clear definition of what "done" looks like at the business level.
Initiatives in SAFe: The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) uses "Strategic Themes" at the portfolio level and "Epics" at the program level — what many teams would call an initiative in SAFe becomes a Portfolio Epic or Business Epic.
Initiatives in practice: Smaller teams (under 20 people) often skip the initiative layer and work at theme + epic + story. Larger organizations need the initiative layer to coordinate work across multiple teams toward a shared business goal.
Initiatives live on executive roadmaps and portfolio views — they're the unit of conversation between leadership and product teams.
Examples
- Initiative: 'Launch in the EU' — contains epics for GDPR compliance, localization, EU data residency, and EU payment methods
- Initiative: 'Enterprise tier' — contains 12 epics across three teams over six months
- Annual product planning identifies four initiatives; each gets a budget, a team, and a target outcome
- Initiative tracker: 3 of 4 epics complete, on track for Q3 launch
- Initiative 'Reduce churn' involves product, customer success, and data engineering — each contributing different epics
Related terms
Snap a initiative. Ship its actions.
BoardSnap turns any whiteboard — including this one — into a summary and action plan.