One of the most overlooked roles in Agile portfolios has to be the Epic Owner. It’s easy to think of this role as just “the person steering the big ideas,” but there’s so much more to it—ownership, accountability, and most importantly, the art of balancing structure without smothering agility. You can create all the epics you want, but without someone who can guide these initiatives, you’re essentially leaving crucial work without a compass.
An Epic Owner’s job starts with the bigger picture. The epic itself is some large-scale initiative that isn’t going to be solved in a sprint or two. It often spans multiple teams, tribes, and product lines, but where does that leave the Epic Owner? Slap-bang in the middle of everything, ensuring those teams are executing on a vision and adjusting when the real world starts throwing surprises. It’s this balance between high-level responsibility and on-the-ground empowerment that makes the role just plain tricky.
Consider accountability. It’s not a popular word in the Agile world because it tends to get associated with control or management layers, which can feel anti-Agile. But here’s the deal—if no one owns the progression of an epic, it flounders. Prioritization fades. Ownership is what keeps momentum alive during slow periods, ensures epics are revisited, and prevents them from becoming forgotten ideas in the backlog. Yet, we can’t simply dump this responsibility on someone’s plate without helping them; beyond ownership, ensuring your Epic Owner has the right support system in place is key.
Epic Owners are not acting in isolation—they’re often surrounded by Agile teams tasked with delivering on parts of the epic, and product managers focused on value. You could see how this setting becomes messy fast. The last thing anyone needs is a boss-like figure hanging over their heads, dictating the work needed to achieve the overarching idea. If you’re heavy-handed as an Epic Owner, you risk stifling creativity and losing that Agile edge where teams can experiment, adjust, and quickly change their approach. So, empowerment of teams becomes a necessary counterweight to that overarching accountability.
But here’s the flip of that coin: you can’t be too hands-off. Too much freedom and you’ll notice inconsistencies, misunderstandings about priorities, and teams diverging from the strategic direction. Epic Owners must walk this fine line between empowering teams and maintaining oversight. You can think of it like steering a large ship. The teams are the engine room making things happen, but as the Epic Owner, you’re the one steering—keeping an eye on the long-term course, aware of adjustments but giving the crew the freedom to determine the best way to maintain speed and efficiency.
The human challenge here is managing without micro-managing. It’s not about Project Manager-style Gantt charts or endless status updates. Instead, it’s about setting clear goals, raising the visibility of progress, and quickly identifying where decisions are needed. The tools an Epic Owner uses—whether it’s visual portfolio boards where work is visible or real-time feedback from program-level events—should support teams but allow them to problem-solve with autonomy. At the same time, the Epic Owner needs to keep expectations anchored and deliberately remove any roadblocks the teams face in achieving those goals.
In Agile portfolios, the role of an Epic Owner isn’t someone barking down orders; it’s more like being a guide—staying engaged, present, and supportive when teams need you and confidently stepping back when they don’t. This dynamic back-and-forth between guidance and freedom allows teams to remain adaptable, which is ultimately what keeps an Agile framework agile. You don’t want to kill that flexibility, and at the same time, you need clarity around expectations.
Helping your Epic Owners strike this balance often starts with defining their role clearly. I’ve seen too many organizations dump someone into this position with no clear boundaries or understanding of responsibility. Over time, their role becomes reactive, and that kills initiative. Setting clear expectations upfront—about how much oversight, how much guidance, and aligning team goals with strategy—can avoid confusion and allow for a flow where everyone understands the guardrails without being tied down by them.
And let’s not forget about impact. Every good Epic Owner knows that constant alignment with strategy is paramount. In a fast-moving portfolio landscape, strategic themes can shift quickly—company vision, market conditions, customer priorities. It’s not enough just to manage the day-to-day delivery of an epic. You need the flexibility to pivot when those high-level goals change, and at the same time, you have to keep teams rallied around a common purpose when the winds of change blow a little harder than expected.
Picking up from where we left off—it’s really easy to see how Epic Owners walk a tightrope. Empowering teams while staying accountable for the big picture is no easy task. Honestly, one of the trickiest parts of this role is knowing when to step in and when to back out. This ability to sense the right moment is what sets great Epic Owners apart. Too early, and the team might feel like their ownership is being stripped away; too late, and the epic might veer off track or balloon in scope. Timing and judgment are everything.
This delicate balance speaks to the concept of structured oversight. In SAFe, epics can stretch across multiple Program Increments, meaning they don’t fit neatly into a team’s two-week sprint rhythm. It’s here that the Epic Owner shines, ensuring the epic doesn’t languish halfway through because of a lack of clarity, focus, or worse, getting lost in the shuffle of competing priorities. But structured oversight isn’t about micromanagement. Rather, it’s about establishing consistent checkpoints—such as during PI planning or portfolio syncs—where the team’s progress, blockers, and hypothesis testing are discussed openly.
Accountability, in this case, doesn’t mean controlling every detail. It’s more about ensuring the epic’s purpose stays visible and understood by everyone involved. Epic Owners often act as translators between business strategy and execution, making sure the “why” behind an initiative is still relevant through fluctuations in market conditions or organizational goals. If you think about it, that’s what accountability truly is here—seeing that epics help move the organization toward its north star, not just ticking off tasks on an endless list.
But in reality, accountability can sometimes feel like wearing a backpack full of heavy rocks. If Epic Owners carry all the weight alone, they’ll burn out. That’s why supporting an Epic Owner takes a team effort. Agile leaders should ensure there’s a defined governance model in place, where an Epic Owner doesn’t have to constantly chase updates or beg for visibility. Having tools like portfolio Kanban systems or custom dashboards can reduce that cognitive load, providing them—and leadership—a bird’s-eye view while allowing teams beneath them to maintain their autonomy.
Remember, supporting teams doesn’t mean stripping away their independence. Teams should feel empowered to deliver on parts of the epic without needing constant hand-holding. Imagine teams that can adjust scope, pivot priorities, or resolve blockers as they arise, all while staying aligned to the broader epic. That’s not just ideal—it’s the goal.
How do you foster this kind of empowerment? Let me tell you, it starts with trust. The best Epic Owners trust their teams to understand the vision and figure out how to get there. It’s not about throwing work over the fence or checking in once a month to see if they’ve made progress. Trust is built by setting clear outcomes but leaving space for teams to chart their unique course toward those outcomes. After all, Agile is about collaboration, transparency, and continuous feedback—not hierarchical status checks.
Where Epic Owners sometimes stumble is when they default to trying to solve every problem themselves. The temptation to “just do it” is always strong when the clock is ticking. But I always say, there’s a big difference between owning an outcome and owning all the work. Good Epic Owners facilitate solutions rather than being the bottleneck for them. They connect the dots, bring in Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) where needed, and lean into the collective problem-solving of their teams.
In the same way, Agile leaders should recognize and encourage this type of facilitation. An empowered Epic Owner is one who knows how to leverage the knowledge within the teams and across the organization and isn’t afraid to get creative when new roadblocks pop up.
One critical area worth touching on is the relationship between the Epic Owner and the broader portfolio management structure. Ideally, this role shouldn’t operate in a vacuum—it’s meant to be interconnected with the portfolio’s objectives. Portfolio objectives shift… often unexpectedly. And as these changes happen, the Epic Owner must be able to adapt swiftly. Agility at scale, like life, doesn’t hold still. Aligning with evolving priorities means constant discussions with portfolio managers and business sponsors. When that strategic north star moves, the Epic Owner needs to pivot—and they need the portfolio’s backing to do it effectively.
To wrap things up, the Epic Owner role is full of nuance. It’s not simply a matter of driving an idea forward, but rather about finessing the balance between ownership and empowerment throughout the epic’s lifecycle. Successful Epic Owners work as connectors, using strategy as their compass and teams as trusted executors.
By fostering clarity without rigidity, facilitating autonomy while guiding the larger picture, and most importantly, supporting teams to do their best work without constant oversight, Epic Owners become an essential part of keeping Agile portfolios humming. But they can’t do it alone. They need clear roles, organizational support, and the freedom to own their part of the overall vision. So, it really isn’t about micromanaging the fine details—it’s about making sure there’s a vision everyone can get behind and letting teams run with it, confident in the fact that they have the Epic Owner’s support when needed.