Migration from Classic to new Greenhopper Rapid Board

Question

our team currently uses the classic greenhopper board to manage longterm planning, via epics. Each epic is about a quarter's worth of work, and the subtasks make up the work that the engineers will have to do. (Other subtasks can be added as more information is found out, etc. )

We are having some trouble moving to the new board:

1. subtasts do not show up on the planning board.

2. Subtasks are related via the parent task/ epic only

3. I can't pull in just a few subtasks out of an epic to work on per sprint.

I understand that the idea is that an epic should be related via the Epic/Theme field, but how do I manage my backlog to sort them in the new rapid board view if I can't pull all the tasks associated with an epic while sorting/ prioritizing the backlog?

For instance, we need to make progress on the top three epics for the quarter. My team will then pull tasks from the top three epics to work on in a sprint. I COULD priotize the epics, and then also prioritze the tasks under it, but the doubling of work makes it difficult, especially with no view in the plan view to show me all the tasks associated with an epic, so I can sort it.

Please let me know if you'd like some screenshots to show you what I'm trying to do.

Karie Kelly1 · Answer

If you are using the boards, linked items don't sort with their parents.  However, for sprint planning, you would only be looking at the items to be story pointed.  You can still view linked items when you view the issue details on the right pane and then navigate to the linked area. Therefore, you can open that item to view if additional references are necessary.(The plan mode issue detail option is the current GH version).

Also, sorting in rapid boards is done via rank.  So, you can drag & drop your backlog and put them in the appropriate rank order and so that they do appear together.

The other item to look at is the new epic feature in greenhopper that is now in labs.  You would have to be on the current GH version though.

Gayathri Kamath · Answer

Hi there, KKelly - that's great, I understand that, but how do I manage sorting the epics and having its associated userstories sort with it - my Product Owner looks at the high level - epic / uesrstory, and the engineers look at user story / task level for sprint planning.

Thanks!

K Kelly · Answer

Typically user stories are used to break down the epic and those are story pointed, with user stories a parent issue and linked to the epic. User stories should be small enough to complete in a sprint and you use the subtasks to actually task out, with the option of tasking the hours, for the user story.