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Using issue linking for Epic -> Story?

Henrik Jönsson2

Greenhopper suggest that we use the Labels field for linking an Epic to user stories. This has several limitations.

I want to use the standard jira issue linking feature instead.

Does anyone knows what problem I will face if configure the Epic->Story links with issue linking instead of using the label field?

Accepted answers

Jon Cotter

In a perfect system, you could build a hierarchy directly in Jira, where Stories would be like Subtasks for Epics... however, Jira only supports a single level of hierarchy in issues, so you are forced to work around it using either Labels or Links. Neither are perfect.

Linking will work, but the relationship wont be visible in the greenhopper UI. You can only see which tickets it is linked to when you dive into a ticket. It is also much harder to access these lists of tickets since they arent really supported outside of the linking plugin. (you can use the hierarchy reports though, although I didnt find these as useful as the label method)

If you use the label method, (this is the way I use them after trying links as well as links+labels), you can put a link to the epic on your greenhopper layout, and then when a user clicks on that link, you get a lighbox with all related the stories in it, which you can drag and drop to re order. It also sums up all the statistics for the epic, and makes it easy to see what was accomplished when (usually our epics are completed over a few different sprints) This would be very difficult to accomplish using the linking.

All in all, you are making a tradeoff. Epics as a concept are great, but the Jira implementation still has a lot of maturing to do. My understanding is that the label method was just a quick solution until they could build in something better.

Hope some of that helps

All comments

Jon Cotter

Hope some of that helps

Beth Schaeferma

I haven't investigated this heirarchy plug-in yet myself, but it sounds like it might be an option worth looking into: https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugin/details/5003

Igor Sereda [ALM Works]

First off, you can't configure "Epic->Story link", meaning that if you create a link type, the users will be able to link any issue to any other issue with a link of that type. (Although I believe there's a plugin for restricting applicability of links.)

Then, as Jon noted, you'll lose support of epics by GreenHopper - at least GreenHopper can quickly show you all stories in an epic. You didn't mention which limitations makes you prefer not to use labels - surely the whole idea is awkward but I guess it works for most people. If choosing between links and Epic/Theme label field, I'd choose labels.

Finally I can't help mentioning Structure plugin - https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugin/details/34717

Structure adds issue hierarchy to JIRA and has GreenHopper integration that lets you combine stories into epics in a nice hierarchical view, and the plugin will update the Epic/Theme label field for you. (Actually it also can integrate with Issue Links, and maintain the links between the issues in the hierarchy.)

Disclosure: I work for the company behind Structure.

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