Cloud Alternatives to SAFe Epic to Feature Translator

[Sara Wortman]

When we configure enterprise Jira instances, we always use the SAFe Epic to Feature Translator to allow us to use the hierarchy of Story -> Feature -> Epic. Since this plugin is not available for Cloud, does anyone know of good alternatives to allow us to enforce this hierarchy in a Jira Cloud instance?

[Dave Rosenlund _Trundl_]

Hi, @Sara Wortman.  Not to steal @Anna-BigPicture's or @Rahul_RVS 's thunder, but there are a number of apps that address your use case. In cases like this one, I suggest crafting an Atlassian Marketplace search that will help you discover, and evaluate, which marketplace apps will best suit your needs.

For example:  

• https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?hosting=cloud&product=jira&query=hierarchy

will show you all of the apps that might address your use case. 

In fairness, my company's product (Structure) shows up on that list, too. My point is, learn how to craft your own marketplace searches to take advantage or all of your choices. 

I published an article a little while back about Agile Gantt. If you scroll down to the "What Now" section you will see I shared some tips and tricks about crafting effective Atlassian Marketplace searches. You might find it to be helpful :)

Hope this helps,

-dave [ALM Works]

[Rhys Diab _Agile Docs_]

Hi @Sara Wortman 

As @Dave Rosenlund _Trundl_ mentioned, there are number of plugins which can help you create a custom issue hierarchy.

It looks like the key issue you want to solve is creating an issue type between Epics and Stories (in your case a Feature).

We created a plugin called Agile Docs which can help you create and enforce this hierarchy.

Below is an example of an Epic -> Feature -> Story hierarchy.

Features are linked to Epics by the "Epic Link" field and Stories are linked to Features by the Agile Docs Parent link.

[Rahul_RVS]

Hi @Sara Wortman 

You can use Issue Links to create your own hierarchy and adjust based on your needs.

To view the hierarchy based on your issue links and also combine standard Jira or Roadmaps hierarchy in one view, you can try out our plugin

Agile Tools : Epic Tree & Time in Status 

The plugin provides % progress based on time estimates and story points at each level of your hierarchy and much more.

Along with this the add-on also provides Links Hierarchy, Multiple (more than 8) Time in Status reports to track your issues and Worklogs report to track time spent each day/week/month, based multiple filters/group

[Anna-BigPicture]

Hi @Sara Wortman

Indeed, the selection of suitable tools that will actively support SAFe activities is essential. 

Let me add few words about my company product - BigPicture. The app was inspired by the SAFe® framework. This is why BigPicture bears its name, and this is why it features all the tools recommended by SAFe®, i.e., Roadmap, Backlog, Program board, and Risk matrix. 

In BigPicture, you can create a no-limited number of WBS levels based on links and adjust it to your workflow. This flexible approach will let you adjust settings to perfectly match your specific business needs and result in more effective project management. 

If you would like to see in practice how to configure Jira and BigPicture best and to make your organization operate smoothly following the principles of the Scaled Agile Framework - ​this whitepaper can be beneficial for you: Implementing  SAFe® with BigPicture.

Would you please let me know if you have further questions? 

[Sara Wortman]

@Anna-BigPicture thanks for the info! Is there a way to enforce a specific hierarchy for an entire project?

[Anna-BigPicture]

Hi @Sara Wortman

Yes, you can set the suitable rules adjusted precisely to your business needs using structure builders. I encourage you to watch our short video tutorial on how to create desired task structure in BigPicture.

I hope you will find it useful.

If you have more detailed questions, just post them in this thread.