Mastering Jira Issue Hierarchy: Custom Levels, Advanced Roadmaps, and Smart Tools

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Managing complex projects in Jira often requires more than the default issue hierarchy of Epics, Stories, and Subtasks. While this structure works well for smaller projects, larger initiatives involving multiple teams and cross-departmental collaboration need a more tailored approach.

Expanding Jira’s issue hierarchy with Advanced Roadmaps can help teams  streamline their workflows, track progress more effectively, and align tasks with broader strategic goals. Let’s explore how to make the most of Jira’s hierarchy and improve your project management.

Why Expand Jira’s Default Hierarchy?

Jira’s default hierarchy is ideal for basic project management, but for growing teams and organizations, it can become restrictive. Whether you’re managing a global marketing campaign, coordinating hiring efforts across departments, or handling long-term development roadmaps, you need more flexibility to track tasks, dependencies, and progress.

For example, a marketing team running multiple campaigns may struggle to link individual deliverables to a broader strategy. Similarly, a product development team juggling several projects might need to track how each task aligns with overarching company goals.

This is where Advanced Roadmaps and custom hierarchies come in, allowing teams to create a structure that reflects their unique workflows.

Advanced Roadmaps for Custom Hierarchies

Expanding the Levels
Advanced Roadmaps, available in Jira Premium and Enterprise, enable teams to go beyond the default hierarchy.

You can add custom levels such as Initiatives, which serve as a parent level above Epics, representing high-level goals that tie multiple projects together.

For example:

• Initiative: Expand Market Presence
  • Epics: Launch New Product, Build Regional Marketing Teams
    • Stories: Develop Ads, Publish Blog Posts, Set Up Local Events
      • Subtasks: Create Ad Creatives, Draft Blog Content, Finalize Event Logistics

This approach provides a clear structure, making it easier to visualize how different tasks contribute to organizational goals. Teams can also monitor capacity, identify bottlenecks, and align efforts across departments.

How to Configure Custom Hierarchies

1. Create New Issue Types: Go to Settings > Issues > Issue Types > Add Issue Type.
2. Add to Issue Type Schemes: Assign the new issue type to your project’s scheme.
3. Associate with Hierarchy Levels: Use Advanced Roadmaps to define where the new issue type fits into your hierarchy.

Once configured, the hierarchy becomes visible in your roadmap and timeline views, helping teams stay aligned and track progress effectively.

In addition, Advanced Roadmaps allow teams to manage dependencies between tasks and monitor capacity. This approach helps you spot bottlenecks, allocate resources efficiently, and guarantee that no team is overloaded. You can explore how to work with plans in advanced roadmaps for further details.

Use Case: Managing Strategic Initiatives Across Locations

Organizations often face the challenge of managing strategic goals that vary by region or country due to unique laws, cultural guidelines, or operational priorities. With Advanced Roadmaps, you can create custom hierarchy levels to reflect these regional differences while keeping everyone aligned with overarching goals.

For instance, imagine an organization rolling out a strategic initiative like "Increase Employee Satisfaction" in France.

To track and manage this effectively in Jira, the following hierarchy could be established:

1. Strategic Priority: Increase Employee Satisfaction
2. Regional Area: European Offices
3. Country/Location: France
4. Epics: Implement New Feedback System
5. Tasks: Create survey, Distribute survey, Collect feedback
6. Subtasks: Select team members, Research methodologies, Code the survey form

This structured approach ensures every action supports the larger strategic goal while allowing teams to adapt plans to local requirements.

Custom hierarchy levels make it easier to manage the complexity of cross-regional initiatives, offering a bird’s-eye view of progress while breaking down tasks into actionable steps. Each Jira issue directly contributes to the higher-level objectives, ensuring alignment across departments and regions.

Using Advanced Roadmaps, teams can maintain focus on strategic goals, improve collaboration, and adapt workflows to meet regional needs.

Best Practices for Managing Your Processes with Smart Tools

While Advanced Roadmaps expand Jira’s capabilities, they don’t address every challenge, especially for teams managing recurring tasks. This is where Smart Tools like Smart Templates and Smart Checklists step in to fill the gaps.

For example, marketing teams running multiple campaigns can use Smart Templates to automate the creation of issue hierarchies, including Epics, Stories, and Tasks.

Once a structure is standardized for a campaign, it can be saved as a reusable template. This eliminates repetitive setup work, ensures consistency across projects, and provides a clear framework for future campaigns.

Smart Templates combined with Advanced Roadmaps further simplify managing complex Jira hierarchies by enabling teams to create custom issue types, such as Initiatives or Milestones, and apply standardized templates for recurring tasks.

For instance, in the strategic marketing initiative example discussed earlier, a company can establish a standardized hierarchy to achieve broader goals like "Increase Employee Satisfaction." This hierarchy could include:

• Initiatives: High-level goals like "Increase Employee Satisfaction."
• Regions/Departments: Specific areas such as European Offices or a country like France.
• Epics: Related tasks like "Implement a New Feedback System."
• Subtasks: Actionable items such as "Select team members," "Research methodologies," and "Code the survey form."

Smart Checklists complement this process by breaking tasks into actionable steps within a single Jira issue.

Instead of creating multiple subtasks, Smart Checklists allow teams to add detailed to-do lists within individual Jira issues. For example, a task like “Write Blog Post” can include a checklist with steps such as:

• Draft the article
• Review with the team
• Finalize and schedule publication

This reduces clutter on the project board while keeping all steps visible and actionable.

Teams can use similar templates to create standardized hierarchies for other projects, like quarterly budget planning, customer feedback initiatives, or engineering sprints. With a structured template, teams can replicate workflows across regions or departments while tailoring them to specific project needs.

The Smart Hierarchy tool further simplifies management by offering a high-level snapshot of how issues connect within a project.

This tool shows the relationships between tasks, tracks progress, and summarizes checklist completion—all in one view. It’s an intuitive way to keep projects organized and teams aligned without navigating multiple screens.

Final Thoughts

Jira’s Advanced Roadmaps and Smart Tools transform how teams manage their work. By customizing the issue hierarchy and integrating tools like Smart Templates and Smart Checklists, teams can efficiently handle complex projects, align tasks with strategic goals, and improve collaboration across departments.

This article was initially posted in TitanApps blog.

💡 Learn more about Smart Templates

💡 Learn more about Smart Checklist

💡Learn more about Smart Hierarchy