How to create a specific issue type hierarchy

Question

Hello Community,

I am looking to set the following hierarchy but, I am not sure how to do it. Could someone help me with this process? Thank you.

* We are aiming to modify the hierarchy for the FEATURE issue type

Currently, we can add subtasks as child of a feature, but ideally, we would want to add the USER STORY issue type as a child for us to be able to see in the hierarchy of the roadmap.

The hierarchy we want to have is the following

EPICS Should have FEATURES as children

FEATURES Should have USER STORIES as children

USER STORIES Should have SUBTASKS / TASKS | BUGS as children

Kit Friend_kfjbwi · Answer

Not as far as I'm aware @Steve Zielinski  but interesting query. You CAN have sub-tasks below higher level items to help track "you need to do X to help with this" but not items from lower levels proper.

To test I added a task to a portfolio container project:

But even then you can't see them as available below the items (Advanced roadmaps only shows the option to add at the same level or below)...

...and the parent link field only shows the next level up (as well as an error warning):

Steve Zielinski · Answer

@Kit FriendIs there a way to allow something at the Initiatives level to also contain Stories?

In my case I have implemented Work Flow -> Theme ->Epic -> Task -> Subtask. There are times I want to put a task under Theme. (I understand from your answer above the simple thing to do is just turn a task into an Epic.)

Thanks!

Kit Friend · Answer

This is a long running challenge for teams seeking to use SAFe-type language in Jira which is somewhat fixed now in DC but not Cloud.

The simple option is not to use Features as an intermediary layer - adopting a hierarchy like TIES (Themes > Initiatives > Epics > Stories) works great for many teams, and is a natural top up to how they will have worked for years. Jira is somewhat hardcoded for the level above Story to be called Epic - you'll see signs of this everywhere like the presence of Epic as a sidebar in the backlog view.

Also arguably 'feature' is an odd word to use for breaking things down (it has an actual meaning - "my app has a feature where you can see all the content in one place" etc) - there's a great article here: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes

The longer answer is that fully supporting this is allegedly planned, but has been floating around for some time: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Upcoming-Rename-epics-in-your-company-managed-projects/ba-p/1874726

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/Rename-Epic-as-as-Feature-in-Jira-cloud/qaq-p/1485530

...in practice I tell teams to not worry about this and move on, they're all made up words anyway - there's only meaning to them if you all agree to use them the same way :-)