how to crate parent/child relationships between stories or tasks?

Question

Our very large organisation has created an incredibly restrictive jira where we are not allowed to use initiatives, and sub tasks dont have any of the requred statuses.

So we only have epic and stories, two levels of hierarchy for our large project.

I have seen it mention that tasks can have parent/child tasks.

How is this done, and can it be done for epics or stories?

I have never seen this option.

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

Hi @nutmix

just to add to @Walter Buggenhout's great answer:

Jira's "built-in" issue hierarchy is always global, so even if you would move to Premium, you'd still have to agree on one hierarchy for the entire site.

The one concept that would give you full flexibility is issue linking. Issue links can be created between any pair of issues, and signify any kind of relationship - including parent/child. The downside is that Jira doesn't really recognise an issue link as a parent/child relationship, and therefore won't give you a lot of hierarchy-related features.

There are, however, a number of hierarchy-focused apps on the Atlassian Marketplace that can do so. E.g., my team and I work on an app in which your use case should be easy to solve: JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. It also comes with a number of advanced features, including the support for configurable issue hierarchies. These issue hierarchies (a.k.a. structures) can be based on Jira's built-in parent/child relationships (like epic/story, or task/sub-task), and/or based on issue links of configurable issue link types (like is parent of / is child of).

This how it looks in action for a 5-level hierarchy:

I should add that you don't need Jira Premium for this to work.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes

Rahul_RVS · Answer

Hi @nutmix

If you would be interested in a mktplace add-on , try out

Issue Hierarchy

The app allows you to create a hierarchy using issue links. You can link any issue type above or below stories / tasks. The app shows %complete progress at each parent level. It roll ups the time tracking fields, story point or numeric fields at each parent level.

Disclaimer : I am part of the app team

Walter Buggenhout · Answer

Hi @nutmix,

It is very understandable that you have not seen this option. Jira (on a standard or free plan) does indeed have a limited issue hierarchy, as you describe consisting of only 3 levels:

1️⃣ Epic

2️⃣ All standard issue types (story, bug, task, ...)

3️⃣ All sub-task issue types

On a premium plan (which your company probably does not offer you) additional levels can be added above the epic level, but inserting different levels inside Jira's default hierarchy is not possible out of the box.

There are Marketplace apps that offer flexible hierarchy structures, often leveraging issue links in Jira to create the levels you want. These apps are commercial, so you will have to raise the need internally with your Jira admins as well to move forward.

Hope this helps!