JIRA: Epics vs Labels vs Components

Question

This blog has a definition of epics in JIRA:

Epics are significantly larger bodies of work. Epics are feature-level work that encompasses many user storie

Answer 1

Epics by definition are short-lived issues when compared to the project as a whole. Components and Labels on the other hand are forever. And, you should stick to use them by their true meanings however tempting it may be otherwise.

Create Epics for features, or as mentioned by @Sateesh, for bigger stories. They should solve their purpose, and once the business need is done for, they should then be closed/done.

Components are not features. They are the technical parts of the system. They can also be used for categorizing your parts or... well, components :P... of your product.

Labels can be anything, as mentioned by @barnaby. Typically, they are keywords, catch-phrases, words people may want a task to relate to, etc. I use it mainly to make issues better searchable from a long-term perspective. There is a JIRA plugin which gives you a JIRA label cloud (for purely fancy purposes, I feel :D) that might interest you, too.