Simplest Way to Create a Plan Solely Relaying on Parent Links

[Rich DeCoste]

Here's my problem.

How can I go about creating a Plan that returns issues types that align to our configured hierarchy structure without having to use the Initiative, Epic, or Feature keys are Parent key sub filters. 

Example:
Jira Project: Super Cool Things houses only the Initiatives Director Sue is Accountable for delivering against for the 2026 calendar

Director Sue has 10 Product Managers that utilize 8 differentJira Projects to structure, prioritized and plan. Each PM's creates an Epic with a parent link back to the Initiatives they're supporting for Director Sue. 

Then, those same PM's can create Features to break Epic work down into small bits of work, again with a Parent Link back to the Epic. 

Director Sue doesn't want to have to remember all the projects and boards each team works out of or the individual stories they create. She wants a Jira Plan view that simply follows the outlined Hierarchy without having create a complete Filter that falls apart when a new board is created, or a PM decides to create a new project.

Director Sue want to see the Initiatives she owns and the child records all way down to the features. What's the easiest way to accomplish this?

[Mendel Liang]

Heya, it's possible to achieve something like this (though very manually) using the JQL function portfolioChildIssuesOf.

It'll look something like this 

(key in portfolioChildIssuesOf("SCRUM-76") OR key in portfolioChildIssuesOf("SCRUM-52") OR key in portfolioChildIssuesOf("SCRUM-4")) AND issuetype in (Story, Task)

Where you'll have to manually add each initiative that Director Sue manually in the JQL. These are all wrapped up in a set of parenthesis, then we further filter those results with the AND issuetype to filter to just the desired types e.g feature in your example.

Once this is created you can save it as a Filter and use it as a work item source in your Plan.

[Joseph Chung Yin]

@Rich DeCoste 

Welcome to the community.  One possible idea is change your plan's "Work items sources" to use JQL filters where the plan's content will only contain the issues that you want the plan to use.

However, I am sure that you already know if you just having one overall plan that pulls all the projects content, you can create different views to focus on the data of the plan.

See - https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/preconfigured-views-in-advanced-roadmaps/

Also, if your Jira subscription is premium or enterprise, then you may also want to review this fairly new feature of Program boards for planning - https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/what-is-the-program-board-in-my-plan/

Hope this may help.

Best, Joseph Chung Yin