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.