Epics are themes that allow more complex problems to be broken down into user stories that you can plan and execute. Epics are too big to be digested in one go - working on them as they are is like trying to stuff a whole roast chicken in your mouth. You need to carve it apart first.
You can use user goals as your epics if you like to use a Cockburn user goal hierarchy to model your product (there’s even templates for this on Miro).
Epics can be long-lived, spanning several milestones in a project. This is especially true for streams of work like BAU or technical improvement that need to be mixed into your plan but don’t represent a finite goal.
You can run an epic kickoff to get the right people together at the right time and flesh out the discovery.
