Product Owner drafts this at beginning to clearly written vision and shows what they team is aiming for - this defines the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
- just enough functionality for it to be usable by early adopters
- faster release of the MVP compared to a completed product allows for faster feedback loop with users
- reduces scope creep, when goals are clear and limited
- helps team understand their role
Process after establishing vision
- identify themes for MVP vision - these are broad groupings of related work
- break themes down into features - decide which features are necessary for MVP, and which are 'nice to have'
Unsure what what a theme or a feature is, and how they compare to user stories? You're not the only one!
- As a general rule, themes are categories of user stories that can conceptually be grouped together to indicate related set of requirements
- As a general rule, epics o features are high-level User Stories that are suitable for Product Backlog, but that will probably be split up into multiple Use Stories once the Development team starts to dissect them.
In industry, every organization (or even every team) decides on their own way of categorizing user stories that makes sense for them, so these terms are often used in other ways.
- this outline of translating Features to User Stories may give you a sense of the variability of these terms... you ar not required to follow this method... many others do it differently.