How do we create a report/dashboard on bugs by project, without making this an admin nightmare?

[Godwin-Rousso_ Justin]

My organization is trying to understand how many bugs are being introduced by our roadmap items. 

Our initial solution was to make the environment fields and parent fields mandatory, so that we can then report out on any bug where the environment is production and is tied to a parent. However, we are worried about what to do when a bug is for a ticket that is not part of an epic. 

How can we reliably provide the organization with a report of bugs per roadmap item, without making this an administrative nightmare and ensuring data integrity?

[Habib__Plugio__]

Hi @Godwin-Rousso_ Justin 

The hole you've found is structural: Bug sits on the same hierarchy level as Story and Task, and a parent has to be one level up, so a Bug's Parent can only be an epic-level item. For a bug about a story that isn't under any epic there is no valid value, and a mandatory field just makes people pick a random one.

I'd keep Parent optional and treat "no roadmap item" as a real category rather than a data error:

• Report on issuetype = Bug AND environment = Production grouped by Parent (Pie Chart or Two Dimensional Filter Statistics gadget, Statistic Type = Parent). Bugs with no parent become their own bucket, and that number is worth seeing anyway (bugs from work outside the roadmap).
• Data integrity through review instead of blocking: a filter with parent IS EMPTY AND created >= -14d checked in bug triage, or an Automation rule on Work item created that comments on production bugs without a parent asking for the roadmap item.
• If a mandatory Parent is non-negotiable, the usual answer is one standing "Non-roadmap / maintenance" epic per project. It works, but watch its count, it becomes a dumping ground.

If you also want to record which story introduced the bug when there is no epic, add a link type like "causes / is caused by". Parent stays optional; the link keeps the causal trail.

If you want the bug count next to each roadmap item's progress in one table, that's where the native gadgets stop. Disclaimer: I work for Plugio, the vendor of Plugio Suite. Its breakdown widget groups by Parent with JQL-defined metrics per row, keeps the no-parent bugs as their own row, and drills into the bug list.