What is an Epic in GitLab?

An Epic in GitLab is fundamentally a high-level grouping of related issues across projects. It serves as a strategic tool to organize and manage work that extends beyond individual projects, allowing teams to align multiple initiatives and track progress collectively. By using Epics, organizations can better visualize their goals and objectives, facilitating higher-level planning and coordination across different teams and related tasks.

This feature is particularly beneficial for larger projects where individual issues might fall under various categories or features that contribute to a broader outcome. By aggregating these related issues under a single Epic, teams can maintain a clear overview of the overall progress and ensure alignment with strategic objectives.

The other options do not encapsulate the comprehensive purpose of an Epic. A single project milestone pertains to a specific point in time within a project timeline, which is narrower in scope than an Epic. A collection of unrelated issues could lead to confusion and lacks the cohesive structure that an Epic represents. Similarly, a feature for automating deployments does not relate to the concept of Epics, as it refers to operational functionalities within the GitLab DevOps lifecycle rather than project management and organization.