what is a jira epic

An epic in Jira is a large body of work that can be broken down into a number of smaller stories or tasks. It is essentially a large user story that can span more than one project and can be delivered over a set of sprints. Epics help teams break their work down while working towards a bigger goal and are a fundamental part of agile and DevOps practices. They are typically used to capture a large body of work, such as performance-related work, in a release. Epics can be created and managed in Jira Software using various methods, such as the Timeline, Backlog, and Global Create issue button