Agile Project Management - Types of Work Packages

When you need to managed project in the agile way. You must know the terminology.

In this blog post we define meaning of general types of Work Packages:

• Task
• Milestone
• Summary Task
• Feature
• Epic
• User Story
• Bug 

Types of Work Packages in OpenProject tool

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Understanding Work Packages in Agile Project Management

When teams move from traditional project management to Agile, one of the first sources of confusion is terminology. Words like task, milestone, or feature often sound familiar—but in Agile they have more specific meanings and relationships.

This post explains the most common “work package” types you will encounter in Agile environments and how they fit together.

Task – the Smallest Unit of Work

A Task is the most basic building block of work.

It represents a single, concrete activity that can be completed by one person in a relatively short time. Tasks are usually technical in nature and describe how something will be done rather than what will be delivered.

Examples:

• Create database table for customer records
• Write unit tests for login module
• Design icon for mobile app
• Deploy new version to staging environment

Tasks are typically measured in hours and are used mainly by the development team to organize daily work.

Milestone – a Significant Point in Time

A Milestone is not a piece of work itself but a marker that indicates important progress.

Milestones represent goals, deadlines, or major achievements in a project timeline.

Examples:

• MVP Released
• First customer onboarded
• API version 2.0 launched

In Agile projects, milestones are often used at a higher planning level to track major outcomes while still allowing flexibility in how the team reaches them.

Summary Task – Grouping Related Work

A Summary Task is a container that groups multiple tasks together.

It helps organize work hierarchically. In many Agile tools this concept exists simply to make planning and reporting easier.

Example:

Summary Task: Implement Payment Module

• Task: Integrate payment gateway
• Task: Build checkout page
• Task: Add error handling

Summary tasks are mainly a project management convenience rather than a core Agile concept.

Feature – Something Valuable to the User

A Feature represents a distinct piece of functionality that delivers value to end users.

Unlike tasks, which describe internal work, features describe what the system should be able to do.

Examples:

• Users can reset their password
• Customers can pay with credit card
• Managers can export monthly reports

Features are typically large enough to require multiple user stories or several days/weeks of effort.

Epic – A Large Goal Broken Down Over Time

An Epic is a very large body of work that cannot be completed in a single sprint or iteration.

Think of an epic as a high-level business objective that must be broken down into smaller pieces before it can be implemented.

Example Epic:

“Improve the overall customer onboarding experience”

This epic might later be split into features such as:

• Self-service registration
• Guided product tour
• Email verification

Epics help teams plan long-term initiatives while keeping day-to-day work manageable.

User Story – Describing Value From the User Perspective

The User Story is one of the most important Agile concepts.

A user story expresses a requirement from the viewpoint of a user and focuses on the value delivered, not on technical details.

Classic format:

As a [type of user], I want [some functionality], so that [benefit].

Examples:

• As a customer, I want to save my favorite products so that I can find them later.
• As an admin, I want to reset a user’s password so that I can help them regain access.

User stories are usually small enough to be completed within a single sprint and are the main planning unit in Scrum and similar Agile frameworks.

Bug – Work Caused by Something Broken

A Bug represents a defect or problem in existing functionality.

Unlike features or stories, bugs are unplanned work. They describe situations where the product does not behave as intended.

Examples:

• The login button does nothing on mobile devices
• Report export produces corrupted files
• Prices are calculated incorrectly for some currencies

Even though bugs are not “new features,” they still need to be tracked, prioritized, and fixed just like any other work item.

How It All Fits Together

These elements form a natural hierarchy in Agile planning:

Epic → Features → User Stories → Tasks

• Epics describe big strategic goals
• Features deliver concrete capabilities
• User Stories break features into small pieces of user value
• Tasks describe the technical steps needed to complete a story

Milestones sit alongside this structure as progress markers, while bugs can appear at any level when something needs to be corrected.

Final Thoughts

Agile project management is not just about new ceremonies and tools—it’s also about using a shared language to describe work clearly.

Understanding the differences between tasks, stories, features, and epics helps teams:

• Plan more effectively
• Communicate more clearly
• Prioritize based on real user value
• Track progress at the right level of detail

Once these concepts become familiar, Agile planning becomes far less mysterious—and far more powerful.

Feel free to adapt this text to your audience or add real examples from your own projects.