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Epic under a Epic?

Kannan S2

Hi All,

We are using the AGILE methodology in which we create epics and stories.

Can we customize the issues to make epics as childrens of existing epics

and stories as childrens of stories?

The current hierarchy is

Epic--->is a parent of--->Story

What i additionally want is

Epic 1--> is a parent of -->Epic 2

Story1--> is a parent of---> Story 2

Bildschirmfoto 2016-11-07 um 15.58.36.png

Accepted answers

All comments

HenriqueA

Hi Kannan,

At this moment it’s not possible to put an Epic inside another Epic.

The Epic is the highest point in the hierarchy, so you can’t make a “sub-epic”.

On the other hand if you want to create a hierarchy you can create a sub-task of the Epic or Story by accessing the issue, clicking the "More" button and selecting “Create Sub-Task”.

Kind Regards,

Henrique Lechner

Kannan S2

Hi Henrique,

I understand that Epic is a greenhopper's issue type. But what is the logic behind the impossibility of putting an epic inside another epic or even a story inside another story.

In this website it is understood that Epic is not a parent of a Story which sounds logical but why is that epic is not allowed to put inside another epic or even in the case of Story inside a story. what is the point which is illogical in these cases.?

Michael Lahens

Yeah! The "sortability" of epics are so nice on the planning board, that I want to leverage that with a sub-epic too.

Noah Arliss

The problem with using sub-tasks is that you can not move only a single sub-task into a sprint, you have to include the parent task. At the end of the day what most of us want is to have an N-tiered heirarchical project where each atomic unit of the project can be included within a sprint.

Bryan Solan

Agreed, this is my biggest problem right now with JIRA for planning. I want to group features under the umbrella of an epic for a release, but those items themselves are too big for an iteration so they need to be broken down (need to be epics themselves so they can parent stories). And as Noah says, I cannot drag sub-tasks in to sprints. This is most frustrating!

PNH-admin

Well, at this moment it IS possible to create an Epic in an Epic. This is only possible in the old view however. In the epic I can create an issue and can chose for Epic. Really interesting. I now wonder if I have configured this myself by accident....

Rebeka.Halbert

I need to have a structure like Initiative-> Epic -> Story -> Subtask

To follow a scaled agile framework approach, is this possible?

Greg_oo6oy6

Jira structure is the solution... you can create a Jira link type (such as "comprises of") and then get Structure to render hierarchically. It can do so much more too.

Apart from boards, I rarely use the Jira UI out of box any more, Structure is that good.

Bruce Chalupsky

Greg, will the Jira sprint board allow me to then set filters based on those links? From what I've seen on the Structure demo, you loose those links in the sprint board. Plus, Structure seems pretty PMO-ish and SAFE-ish by focusing on Gannt charts and hours to complete vs. Sprints, Story Points and burndowns to be really useful for Agile projects.

Perhaps the demo site is missing a lot. It looks like Structure was built to satisfy Project Managers trying to Agile-fall.

We want to create more flexible hierarchies since XP practices breakdown Stories into Tasks, and then subtasks those Tasks for Sprint Planning. We like how Jira can filter sprint swimlanes by Epic and Stories to make transparent all the team members working on the same effort. But if you are doing XP, aka Tasks under Parent Stories, Jira won't allow it.

Native Jira puts Tasks at the same level of Stories, so you can't represent parent-child relationships in the sprint filters.

Eugene Sokhransky _ALM Works_

Hi Bruce,

This is Eugene from Structure team. Actually Structure is methodology-agnostic and can be used in many different scenarios. This is something that makes us different from some other PM tools out there. Gantt is just one of the options for those who need it.

As far as boards are concerned the most popular approach is to keep the standard Jira hierarchy - Epics -> Stories -> Sub-tasks, and then introduce some issue type to represent the issues one level above. Then with Structure you can visualize this kind of hierarchy and see the full picture, which will help you understand the status across multiple teams and projects and also can help you plan.

We'll be happy to setup a call and discuss this in more details. Just email me at eugene@almworks.com and we'll take it from there.

Thanks,

Eugene

Dave Rosenlund (Trundl)

Maybe @Rebeka.Halbert would like to join, too

Maksym Ivanov

The solution I've found is the next:
- create an Epic

- create Task in the Epic

- Open your Task

- convert the Task to an Epic

No you see that you second epic is a part of your main epic

Julius Š. (Personal)

Yes. Using "Jira Align".

Chandra Sekhar Dadi

We have a clear business requirement and the purpose of grouping the activity of low in nature can be isolated as epics and we want to link to the main release Epic. it's convenient to allow Epic under Epic. I am not sure why this feature not implemented yet.

I request at least introduce a subEpic Concept facilitating easy of Organizing things on JIRA.

We are using the Could facing this issue. this is such a high demand feature request by so many Agile managers.

Could you please support in the future.

Charles_35a88d

For most roadmaps, you need..

To show the general WBS tasks as a roll up - so its easy to dive in or out of detail.
Dependency type is the critical path - SS, SF, FS, and FF relationships
Clearly show a lot of interrelated things, but highlight the differences at a glance.

Current Jira roadmaps do not fully do any of these things.

Here is a workaround: Go Short term -

Use Epic color coding
Arrange things in simple workstreams
(the colors help visually and you can scroll the workstream offscreen during presentations.)

This means presentation prep is mostly rearranging the workstream order, based on what a stakeholder will most likely need to talk about.

That said - providing a way to roll up the epics would be a big bonus...

Keep in mind that Jira is for AGILE development.
In a perfect world, Agile development only needs a goal, and a bunch of iterations - so in that sense the new roadmap is fine. It only shows a few months - ok, don't roadmap a year in advance.

I only encounter severe limitations with the Jira roadmap tool as I begin to show related activities at a program level (interrelated groups of development, marketing, ops, etc)

Julie Dorgan

@Maksym Ivanov - tried this, it didn't work

Emanuel Y

Similar to pervious comments, I'm just wondering does Jira plan to support SAFe or similar methodologies. Where you can have Features -> Epic -> Story->ect. Without having to rely on tools such as Roadmaps or plugins.

Is this in Atlassian's plans?

Dave Rosenlund (Trundl)

Hi, Emanuel. I cannot speak for Atlassian, but as far a I know they have not announced any such intention. Moreover, many companies implement the SAFe hierarchy in their own, specific to their needs, way.

Therefore, most SAFe/Jira customers choose to use Jira Align, or AgileHive, BigPicture, or Structure for Jira (which your company uses). Each offers varying degrees of flexibility (vs. strict adherence to the SAFe hierarchy).

At this point at least, you kind of have to pick your antidote based on your specific needs.

Hope this helps,

-dave [ALM Works]

Igor_xoyyqv

Jira Align - what is it?

Dave Rosenlund (Trundl)

Hi, @Igor Jira Align is a product from Atlassian.

-dave [ALM Works]

Robert Sanders_cuzlzb

Just feeling the need to vent, since I'm sure nothing's coming of this suggestion. But yeah my company misuses Epics instead of PLM / features. So epic are often assigned to long lived (or even "until project EOL") features and then used to track say hours invested. It would be great if a secondary level of Epics could be used to group actual related stories. The use of epics in this manner is way above my head and likely dates back to historical restrictions on projects configurations within Jira.

Jorge Luque

definitely does not work on Jira Cloud as of 2021-06-24

Chandra Sekhar Dadi

At least we can try to allow something like SubEpic to manage smaller epics and group them for convinience.

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