In the previous video, I showed you how to use a fear matrix to rank ideas for AI applications generated in a brainstorming session according to their ethical implications—is an idea scary, or is it ethically responsible?—and the added value it brings to your organisation—is an idea useful, or not much use? You’ll end up with a number of ideas. In this video, I’ll show you how to develop the most useful and ethically responsible ideas into an A4 page containing the key information about each idea; I call this an epic one-pager.

In the video above, I explain how to create an epic one-pager for an AI application. But first, it helps to know exactly what an epic is. The term epic comes from the world of agile working and simply means a story—a very short story that explains an idea to everyone involved in technological innovation in your organization. Storytelling is a useful way to get things done. People like to think in stories. They can often remember short stories effortlessly, and you can usually break them down into smaller pieces quite easily. That’s how I approach developing ideas in an impact matrix, too. First, I come up with the big story, and I do that in the form of an epic one-pager.

Epics are usually developed and delivered by a team of specialists within an organisation over a three-month period. A quarter is long enough to develop an idea into a real AI application, but short enough to plan and manage effectively. So write your epic one-pager with a three-month scope in mind.

Above, you can see at a glance what goes on an epic one-pager. I think the most important thing on it is the goal. What do you want to achieve with the epic? When describing the goal, it’s useful to think right away about how it contributes to your organisation’s vision. Why is it important to deliver this particular epic? What do you want to achieve with it? What problem will it solve?

It’s also useful to explain how an epic contributes value to your organization in terms of its goals and expected benefits. Who is the target audience? What resources are needed to deliver the epic? Think of specialist tools, expertise or access to specialists, or access to specific data.

An epic one-pager also briefly describes the size of an epic in terms of the amount of work involved—for example, the budget required, the time it will take to deliver, and the number of hours needed. This is often estimated using a scale similar to clothing sizes: small, medium, large, or extra large. Try to make this estimate together with several specialists to improve its accuracy and reliability.

Set against the cost and time involved in an epic are the returns. What benefits can you expect the epic to deliver once it has been developed and implemented in your organization’s business processes? In short, how much value does the epic represent, and how useful will it be? Tip: discuss this estimate with several experts too, and use their input to arrive at a final estimate of the expected added value. You can make the idea of added value more tangible by looking at it from four different perspectives, based on Kaplan and Norton’s widely used Balanced Scorecard: the expected value for internal business processes, the product delivered by the epic, the financial return, and the extent to which the epic contributes to innovation.

In a following video, I’ll explain how to write user stories based on an epic like that.