nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

How to set a hierarchy with three levels below epic

Benjamin Peikes

Trying to understand the mentality behind how roadmaps work. Our basic structure has been for many years:

Epic - High level goal
Story - A user story, may require multiple new features to implement
New Feature - This is where most of our work is done.
Sub Task - Developer tasks associated with a feature, that we want to be assignable while keeping the feature assigned. For instance, we have "Code Review" as a Sub Task type. These do not need to show up on a road map.

For some reason, it seems like Atlassian has locked "Epic" as being the "first level", which means that we can't put our "New Feature" under Story, because of how the bottom levels are locked in.

Nowhere that I can find does the documentation state that Epic MUST be level 1. I don't quite get why if Level 1 MUST be Epic:

Why does it get a level number? I would think it should look like the bottom two levels which are not editable.
Why would Epic be tied to Level 1?

This basically means that Road Maps are unusable for us. As Story's and New Features are on the same level.

Has anyone else run into this issue? How did you resolve it?

If Atlassian is watching, are there any plans to fix this?

Comments

Mikael Sandberg

Have a look at this KB. The level number following the default setup in Jira Software where Epics are level one, stories/tasks are level 0 and subtasks are level -1. See it as showing the number of steps away from epics the new level is.

Curt Holley

Hi @Benjamin Peikes

With your current set-up, "New Feature" must be a standard issue type (like Story) for sub-tasks to be associated with them.

So, in Advanced roadmaps/Jira Hierarchy "New Feature" would have to remain there (level 0) to maintain that functionality.
It is simply not possible to mess with the core Hierarchy in Jira of Epic/Story(all standard issue types)/Sub-tasks(all sub-task issue types).
You could add "New Feature" to the level 1 "Epic level", but then sub-tasks could not be associated with them anymore, but standard issue types could.

Basically, the hierarchy allows you to add levels above Epic (level1) or to it.

Curt Holley

Actually, if you added New feature above Epic, in Jira you could still add sub-tasks to them, as Jira still sees all issue types as Standard. But I would not recommend this, as it gets mighty confusing when you try and use the upper levels with level 0 functionality (i.e. sub-tasks)

You could also rename Epic to Story, create a new type called Epic and add that to level 2, leave Feature where it is.......but I also would NOT recommend this as a logical way forward.

Benjamin Peikes

I don't understand what you are saying. Perhaps you misunderstood the orginal post. "New Feature" is a standard issue type. The problem is that we need the following hierarchy:
Epic
Story
New Feature
SubTask

The problem is that Atlassian has locked the issue type of "Epic" into level 1, and then everything else falls under level "0" and SubTasks are always level "-1".

Requiring SubTasks to be at the bottom is fine. The issue is that You can't put two levels below Epic because Epic is tied to level 1.

Benjamin Peikes

Read the KB and it's not clear, until after you try to implement a change, that Epic MUST be level 1. It states that Jira Software "comes" with Epic as a level 1 issue type. They don't say that Jira Software only supports Epic as a level 1 issue type.

Maybe this is the issue, that likely will never get addressed.

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-75877

For now, we're locked into having our Stories and our New Features on the same hierarchy level, even though a Story is dependent on New Features.

Curt Holley

Yes @Benjamin Peikes the functionality that has always been associated with the Jira Epic, will always be at level 1. The only difference is now you have the option to call it something other than Epic.

I doubt Atlassian have any intention of offering the ability to build out further hierarchal levels that reside in-between level 1 and level 0.

Benjamin Peikes

Not allowing more levels below Epic would prevent us to use Roadmaps at all. We have way too many legacy workflows built around our set up which has a hierarchy of

Epic
Story
Feature
Subtask

We can’t switch our work items to a subtask type of issue type, as it would require us to update all of our tickets to give them a parent.

Very disappointed that these levels are so fixed. I understand putting Epic fixed at “Level 1”, but it makes no sense to allow any configuration you want above Epic, but not below Epic.

Matthew_q9lqcy

@Curt Holley will the OP's question now be possible with the upcoming changes to epic-link being replaced with parent? @Benjamin Peikes did you ever find a workaround?

Benjamin Peikes

Did not find a work around. Subtasks are a mess. Hopefully the move towards a single parent child linking scheme will fix this. Maybe they will one day depreciate the idea of a subtask, and just rely on parent child.