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Stories to features

Keisha Phoenixx

How to adjust my hierarchy so that I can assign features as parents to stories. Currently I can attach epics as parents to features, but not features to stories. Please, CLEAR instructions.

Accepted answers

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Keisha Phoenixx

Welcome to the Atlassian Community.

The numbering is automatic and indicates the parent/child relationships in descending order; i.e. 3's can parent 2's, 2's can parent 1's, 1's can parent 0's.

The Names on the left are just labels - they do not inherently specify the issue types available at that level.

It is what appears in the Work Items Types area that indicates the actual types of issues between which the relationships need to be created.

There are changes you have to make to the hierarchy, but I want to make a few points about the impact of those changes first.

The work item hierarchy is a global setting. Changes affect all projects in the Jira instances.
Parent and child relationships can be made between work item types that are in adjacent levels only. The work item types at level 2 can be parents only to the work item types at level 1. Types at level 2 cannot be parents to types at level 0.
If you assign a work item type to a different level that will break all current parent/child relationships for all issues of that type in all projects. If you reorder Feature and Epic that will break all existing parent/child relationships between features and Epics, and break all parent/child relationships between Epics and the work item types at level 0.
Epics are a special built-in work item type. That specific work item type is the one that is used for Epic-specific functionality like the Epics panel in boards and the Epics swimlane grouping. The Epic work item type cannot be moved to a different level, but you can change its name

Given the above, if you still want to proceed.

Go to your Work Item Types screen, where you can manage the work item types available in your instance.
Edit the Epic work item type. Change its name to FeatureA (Add the "A" because you already have a work item type named "Feature").
Edit the Feature work item type. Change its name to "Epic".
Edit the FeatureA work item type again. You should now be able to change its name to "Feature"
Go back to the Work Item Hierarchy screen.
When you look in the Work Item Types column you should see it reflecting the changes to the Work Item Type names - you should see Epic at level 2 and Feature at level 1.
Edit the Names for Level 1 and Level 2 to also reflect the name changes; Level 1 change the name to Epic, and Level 2 change the name to Feature.

By making the change in that manner you have not actually changed the hierarchy level of any of the work item types, so the pre-existing parent/child relationships should remain intact. All the work items that were previously the Epic types will now show "Feature" as their type name, but they will still appear in the places where "Epics" previously displayed. All the work items previously showing "Feature" as their type name will now show "Epic" as their type name.

All comments

Utkarsh Agarwal

Hi @Keisha Phoenixx

Welcome to the community!

To make Features the parent of Stories, you’ll need to adjust the issue type hierarchy under Jira Settings > Issues > Issue Hierarchy. This feature is only available on Jira Software Premium and Enterprise plans, as it uses Advanced Roadmaps.

Currently, it looks like you’ve set Epic above Feature, which means Feature acts as a child of Epic and can't be a direct parent of Story. To fix this:

Update the hierarchy like this:

Level 2: Epic (optional)
Level 1: Feature
Level 0: Story
Sub-task (fixed)

Once Feature is placed directly above Story, you’ll be able to link Features as parents to Stories.

📌 Reminder: Changes to the hierarchy affect all company-managed projects in the site.

More info: Configure issue hierarchy

Kind Regards
Utkarsh

Calvin

edit - turns out the below is wrong. It looks like you can from the other user answer. Thats neat!

Can you change your "Feature" to something else like a dummy. That way it may be chooseable in that dropdown you have there for the Epic. Then just rename it on the left.

---

As far as I'm aware, you actually can't do this? Epics are sort of special and have a lot of special interaction between its children and where it appears in views (module section in backlog, swimlanes etc).

Your options are:

Rename Epic to Feature (I'm going to guess thats why they added this functionality?)
- https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-articles/Upcoming-Rename-epics-in-your-company-managed-projects/ba-p/1874726
Talk to your team to re-define what an "epic" is (for example all our teams know of Epics as features). And then they rename the item above it to a "Real Epic" sort of thing.
Use the "link work items" functionality to create that linking
- https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/link-issues/
- Note this makes the linking from "how the team views the ticket" point of view. But it doesn't change things internally. This may mean you are sometimes "fighting" the hierarchy such as in Plans view, and you'd likely need your own alternative view like Structure to see linking in a way that makes sense.
- Its also super annoying because after everyone tries this and sees the issues they then want to go to option 1 above and having to fix the work items becomes a big job across multiple projects.

Keisha Phoenixx

How can I do this? I can’t change the numbering from the issue type hierarchy screen.

Please outline step by step how to complete this.

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Keisha Phoenixx

Welcome to the Atlassian Community.

The numbering is automatic and indicates the parent/child relationships in descending order; i.e. 3's can parent 2's, 2's can parent 1's, 1's can parent 0's.

The Names on the left are just labels - they do not inherently specify the issue types available at that level.

It is what appears in the Work Items Types area that indicates the actual types of issues between which the relationships need to be created.

There are changes you have to make to the hierarchy, but I want to make a few points about the impact of those changes first.

The work item hierarchy is a global setting. Changes affect all projects in the Jira instances.
Parent and child relationships can be made between work item types that are in adjacent levels only. The work item types at level 2 can be parents only to the work item types at level 1. Types at level 2 cannot be parents to types at level 0.
If you assign a work item type to a different level that will break all current parent/child relationships for all issues of that type in all projects. If you reorder Feature and Epic that will break all existing parent/child relationships between features and Epics, and break all parent/child relationships between Epics and the work item types at level 0.
Epics are a special built-in work item type. That specific work item type is the one that is used for Epic-specific functionality like the Epics panel in boards and the Epics swimlane grouping. The Epic work item type cannot be moved to a different level, but you can change its name

Given the above, if you still want to proceed.

Go to your Work Item Types screen, where you can manage the work item types available in your instance.
Edit the Epic work item type. Change its name to FeatureA (Add the "A" because you already have a work item type named "Feature").
Edit the Feature work item type. Change its name to "Epic".
Edit the FeatureA work item type again. You should now be able to change its name to "Feature"
Go back to the Work Item Hierarchy screen.
When you look in the Work Item Types column you should see it reflecting the changes to the Work Item Type names - you should see Epic at level 2 and Feature at level 1.
Edit the Names for Level 1 and Level 2 to also reflect the name changes; Level 1 change the name to Epic, and Level 2 change the name to Feature.

Trudy P Claspill

On a side note, this hierarchy applies only to Company Managed projects.

Team Managed projects manage their work item type hierarchy within each such project, and it is limited to 3 levels; the "Epic" level 1, the "standard" work item types at level 0, and one subtask work item type at level -1.

If you need additional levels above Epics to use with Team Managed projects, let me know and I'll provide more information on that topic.

Keisha Phoenixx

I have a Team Managed project. Would appreciate more information on that topic. Specifically I would like to be able to create a level above Epic so I could implement "Epic"--> "Feature" --> Story/Task/SubTask

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Keisha Phoenixx

Do I correctly understand that you want to set up this issue type hierarchy for a Team Managed project?

"Epic" (level 2)
|-- "Feature" (level 1)
    |-- Story/Task (level 0)
        |-- SubTask (level -1)

As I mention Team Managed projects support only 3 levels within the project. To add levels above that (level 2 and higher) requires use of a Company Managed project.

The item types at level 2 and above have to be defined Globally and added to the Global Work Item Hierarchy as we described above. Work items of those specific types are created within a Company Managed project, not the Team Managed project. It is then possible to set a level 2 item from the Company Managed project as the parent of a level 1 item in the Team Managed project. Making that link is accomplished through an advanced roadmaps Plan.

You will have to create a Plan that is based on both the Team Managed project and the Company Managed project where your level 2 work items exist.

Documentation on establishing that relationship can be found here:

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Advanced-planning-articles/Parenting-a-team-managed-epic-with-a-company-managed-initiative/ba-p/2638197

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/link-issue-to-a-parent-in-advanced-roadmaps/

Within your Team Managed project you can change the name of the Epic work item type to Feature.

However, adding a work item named "Epic" to the global hierarchy could be problematic since the Epic work item type used in Company Managed projects needs to continue to exist. I would recommend that you consider some other name for the work item type that would be added at level 2 in the global item hierarchy.

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