Does Mondifying the Jira Hierarchy After Release and In Use Cause Possible Issues?

Question

We have a Jira instance where we have a Jira hierarchy of: Initiative<->Capability<->Epic<->Story ... 1) One customer is requesting to add a level above Initiative such that there is a new hierarchy relationship: "Product"<->Initiative<->Capability<->Epic ... 2) We have another customer that is requesting that we support two hierarchys, the original: Initiative<->Capability<->Epic<->Story ... And another within the same environment where Capability is dropped: Initiative<->Epic<->Story ... Since we have multiple users using this environment now, what is the impact, if any, to supporting either request (1) or (2) above? Our assumption is (1) can possibly be done without affecting anything but (2) will cause issues and cannot be done. Your feedback is appreciated.

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

Hi @Robert W_ Olsen

when you're talking about hierarchy, I assume you are referring to the hierarchy configured in Advanced Roadmaps?

If so: This hierarchy configuration is global for your site, meaning that you can always only have one - and if you change the hierarchy, your entire Jira site will be affected. For your case 1 and case 2, this may still be manageable, as (unless I'm missing something) case 2 is somewhat of a "subset" of case 1 - but case 3 will likely be largely incompatible.

The only think I can think of is to use issue links to model your hierarchies. An issue link can connect any issue with any other issue, so you have complete freedom. The downside is that Jira doesn't really recognise an issue link as a parent/child relationship and won't give you a lot of hierarchy-related features.

There are, however, a number of hierarchy-focused apps on the Atlassian Marketplace that can do so. I can only speak for the app that my team is working on - JXL for Jira - but here, your use case should be easy to implement. Pay attention to epic WORK-142:

Depending on your configuration, it's either a child of OKR-1, or a child of Initiative WORK-161. This is determined by the active hierarchy configuration (called structure in JXL), of which you can have as many as you want.

For some more context, JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. It also comes with a number of advanced features, including the support for configurable issue hierarchies, issue grouping by any issue field(s), sum-ups, or conditional formatting.

As mentioned above, there may be other apps that can help with that, too. You may already know that you can trial any app for free for 1 month, and depending on the size of your size, it may be free forever. So if an app is an option for your, perhaps try a few and see which works best for you.

Hope this helps,

Best,

Hannes