Forget workarounds: How a SAFe-Certified Architect builds scalable Jira hierarchies that just work

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Do you ever wish Jira's hierarchy was a little more flexible to accommodate ways of working like the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)? You're not alone!

We recently caught up with Robert Nadon, a Lead Atlassian Architect at Forty8Fifty Labs, to chat about this problem. He's ITIL and SAFe Certified, as well as an Atlassian Certified Expert. In short, Robert knows how to handle even the most daunting Jira implementations.

He was noticing a common theme with clients implementing SAFe. They often hit a wall when Jira's standard epic  > story > sub-task hierarchy couldn't capture all the hierarchy levels they needed. The usual options aren't ideal:

• Renaming default Jira fields (which can cause long-term problems).
• Splitting work across Jira and Jira Align (and dealing with the admin overhead of managing two platforms).
• Building workarounds that take extra time to maintain.

For teams trying to implement SAFe properly, none of these feel ideal.

While Robert was thinking about how to solve this problem, we ran into him at an Atlassian Community Event in Austin and introduced him to our Jira Cloud app, Hierarchy for Jira. 

What caught his attention was the ability to add custom hierarchy levels directly in Jira, giving teams the flexibility they needed to implement SAFe in a way that worked for them. Robert was so impressed that he wrote a blog post on the topic, explaining how to build scaled agile hierarchies in Jira using Hierarchy for Jira. 

We then had a chat with Robert to get into more details on his experience with the app so far, walking us through how adding custom hierarchy levels helps bridge the gap between Jira and SAFe requirements, giving clients:

• Better visibility into complex projects.
• Smoother project planning across teams.
• Less manual stitching between tools.

Robert highlighted that he estimates a 20% efficiency improvement in workflows for project managers and about 10% for developers just by having the Jira hierarchy better reflect reality.

If you've ever wanted more flexibility from your Jira hierarchy or struggled with SAFe implementation, then watch or read the full story below to hear how Robert does it! 

💡See the full story of how Robert builds SAFe-ready hierarchies in Jira

📽️ Watch the story below : How Forty8Fifty Labs builds the perfect SAFe issue hierarchy with Hierarchy for Jira

Disclaimer: I work for Upscale (part of the Adaptavist Group), the vendor for this app