Features above or below Epics?

Question

Hi community,

I have a more generalized Agile question for you all -

Does anyone know of any Agile framework that uses Features above Epics?
Everywhere I read, and being an SPC myself, I can find no framework that does this, albeit that our Jira administrator insists that there are, and he has placed Features above Epics ..which as you can imagine is confusing everyone when it comes to PI Planning.

To me, all frameworks point to Initiatives->Epics->Features-> Stories...

I would sincerely appreciate feedback on this as I've been asked to put together a business case to get this amended to the correct hierarchy.

Michael Yaroshefsky - Visor for Jira · Answer

Hey @Kevin Dickson and welcome to Atlassian Community.

I think you're correct that there are no established frameworks that put features above epics.

Is it possible your admin has a different interpretation of what "feature" means, perhaps they're thinking more along the lines of a feature-set? If they think feature refers to something like a mobile app for a product, or a BI reporting suite, then I could see how a feature could encompass several epics, although, I agree it is unconventional!

Best,

Mike

Stephen.Lugton · Answer

Thanks for expanding on that @Kevin Dickson it makes a lot of sense, I'm very much in favour of using what works, so although our general hierarchy is:

* Theme
* Initiative
* Epic
* Story | Task | Bug
* Sub-Task

We could easily change the names, after all they're only ways of grouping the work, in fact for our marketing team the hierarchy we use is:

* Portfolio
* Campaign | Event
* Task | Article | Email, Letter & Notification (ELN or Ellen)
* Task Breakdown

Kevin Dickson_kzqifl · Answer

Hi Septa,

I'm not looking at any specific use case.
Rather I'm just asking if anyone out there has used Features above Epics.
And if so, what was the reasoning .

Hope that makes more sense 👍