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Why can't I create stories under existing epics in Jira Plan.

Tarang

I am seeing what looks like a bug or a poor design in Jira Plan, where one wants to do roadmap planning by creating Epics and Stories to do what if analysis before pushing the scope back out into the teams backlog.

I am able to create an Epic and create stories under the Epic I have just created as long as I don't navigate away from this to anywhere else on the screen. As once I do I am no longer able to create stories under the Epic and any other Epic that may have already existed.

This doesn't make sense and really devalues the Jira plan as a planning surface.

I am on a on premise Jira 8.5.4.

Has anyone encountered this?

Is there a system configuration attribute to set to correct this behavior?

Comments

Dave

Hi @Tarang ,

That does sound like a bug but not one that I can reproduce on the latest versions of Advanced Roadmaps. Can you confirm what version you're using?

You definitely should be able to continue creating as many epics and stories as you like within a plan though!

Regards,

Dave

Tarang

As I mentioned that we are on Jira 8.5.4

is there another version number corresponding to Jira plan - aka Advanced Roadmap?

Also to be clear I can add Epics and I can enter stories to the Epic being entered. However I can’t add stories to existing Epics - defeating the very essence of Agile practice, that of emergent scope. In this case additional stories at a later point in time.

Kind regards,

Tarang

Dave

Hi @Tarang

Yes, Advanced Roadmaps (formerly known as Portfolio for Jira) is a marketplace application and the Jira version you're on (8.5.4) will be able to support many different versions.

The reason I ask is that it's possible a bug crept in that we subsequently fixed, we were previously releasing Portfolio / Advanced Roadmaps every 2 weeks so there are quite a few versions you might be on!

You should definitely be able to add new stories to existing epics though - so if this is present in the latest version then this would definitely be a bug we need to fix urgently, however given that as you point out this is something of a core capability I would have expected us to have received a lot more support requests about this - and this is the first time I can recall seeing anything raised about this.

That's not to imply it's not happening for you - simply that perhaps there is some other reason that isn't apparent and I'm keen to get to the bottom of it to unblock you.

I'm trying to think through reasons why this might happen, one possibility for example could be that you have the hierarchy filter set from Epic to Epic (in which case you would not be shown the option to create a story).

I'd also be curious to know the exact steps you're taking - are you creating a story from the main "Create issue" button or one of the meatball menus next to an existing issue?

Any additional information you can provide would be very helpful

Regards,

Dave

Tarang

This is when I create a new Epic in the 'Advanced Plan'. - for now not so advanced and I will refer by the tab name Plan. I am doing this when I have set the hierarchy filter to Epic, as that where I can see this level and below. So surely entering issues at the level of filter should mean Epics and any issue type below that Epics can and do contain.

CreatingEpic+ChildStories.png

On creating the Epic I can now create any child issue as shown below, but once the cursor focus moves of the

Result I see is:

However I am unable to continue adding more stories and instead see odd behavior such as this

so sure enough it is a bug. As for why not many reports, frankly because most don't use this 'planning surface' as I call it to enter their story map and come to it to see pretty gantt charts :-).

As a Agile coach I am coaching teams to get comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty through use of this planning surface to manage emergent scope.

hope this helps track down the bug.

Tarang

By the way that solution, identified as poor UX design works to introduce issues for any epic. It is the only way to consistently introduce stories within Epic's on Jira Plan using old interface. One can introduce any issue type. Sure it isn't intuitive and wouldn't surprise me if very few people used it to being with.

Dave

I'm definitely not disagreeing with you on that UX, but it is 5 years old now and was replaced with an updated interface 2 years ago that doesn't have the same problems and is (hopefully) more intuitive when it comes to issue creation. The problem that you're describing is one of the many usability and complexity problems that we have attempted to address.

The reality is that we're not going to be updating that old interface, however we are keen to improve the newer interface to address the feature gaps between that exist between it and Live Plans.

There is a build and support burden to maintaining legacy code like this and we're therefore keen to help our customers move to the new interface. You've raised the point about the current visualisation introducing an anti-pattern, and although we're unlikely to change it, we do hope to introduce additional visualisations and planning modes which might address some of those concerns. For example we introduced the additional Dependency Report which we've had good feedback on (see https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Advanced-Roadmaps-articles/Introducing-Advanced-Roadmap-s-new-dependency-report/ba-p/1542097 ) and as mentioned elsewhere we looking at program style boards as well.

I'd be really keen to learn what additional features we'd need to add in order for you to be successful with the new interface as we're actively trying to understand this for all remaining Live Plans users.

Regards,

Dave

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