Hierarchische backlog view

[Etienne Vercouteren]

As a product owner, I (like my development team) want to be able to see a hierarchical backlog in the backlog view. Currently, all items can only be viewed individually in the (sprint) backlog. Just as the "List" view provides a good hierarchical view, I want to be able to see a similar hierarchy in the backlog. Our entire team can't imagine why this isn't possible.
We want to be able to see at a glance which user stories belong together, in both the product backlog and the sprint backlog. If tasks or user stories from the same epic are spread across multiple sprints, I expect to see the same epic in both sprint 1 and sprint 2, but only with the user stories scheduled for that sprint. For example:

Sprint 01

• Epic 01
  • User story/Task 01
  • User story/Task 02

Sprint 02

• Epic 01
  • User story/Task 03
• Epic 02
  • User story/Task 04

Backlog

• Epic 02
  • User story/Task 05
  • User story/Task 06

Is it possible, but we just don't see where the setting for this view is? Or is there perhaps a plugin that can do this?

[Paul Glantschnig - JXL]

Hi @Etienne Vercouteren ,

That's a common and great question. The standard Jira backlog view is a flat list, which isn't ideal for visualizing the full structure of your work.

A native solution for this is Advanced Roadmaps (available in Jira Premium), which is designed to plan and track work across multiple levels of hierarchy and projects (now spaces).

If you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, your use case can also be solved very easily by the app my team and I are working on: JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table app for Jira that allows you to view, inline-edit, sort, and filter your issues in a highly-structured way.

For your specific need, JXL includes powerful and configurable issue hierarchies. You can set up a view that shows all your issues in a tree structure (e.g., Sprint > Epic > Story > Sub-task, or any other structure you need).

In this hierarchical view, you can:
* See all your fields and inline-edit them directly.


* Group your issues by any field.



* Configure sum-ups for fields like Story Points or Time Spent, which will roll up from the child issues to the parent levels.



* Drag and drop issues to re-order them or change their parent.
This all works right out of the box and is much faster and more flexible than a standard backlog.

Here is an example of what a hierarchical view can look like in JXL:

 

Let me know if you have any questions!

Best,

Paul

[Trudy Claspill]

Hell0 @Etienne Vercouteren 

The view you desire is not possible in the native Jira Scrum Backlog screen regardless of the apps you may add to the system.

You may be able to get a view like that from a third party app where that view is entirely separate from the native Backlog screen, but I don't think there are any apps that will change the native Backlog screen to provide that view.

I have never tried to produce a report like what you describe, so I don't have any specific apps to suggest. In general you might want to look at apps that support different planning views or hierarchical item reporting.