How do I group Epics, Features, and Stories?

Question

Hi,

I'm new to Jira. I don't know how to group together Projects, Epics, Features and Stories.

In my company, we organize this way:

+Project A

++Epic A1

+++Feature A1-1

++++Story A1-1-1

A Project will have more than one Epic under it.

An Epic will have more than one Feature under it.

A Feature will have more than one Story under it.

I've been able to successfully create a Project in Jira and then add Stories to the Project, but how do I create an Epic and a Feature?

I would prefer to do this without having to buy additional plugins if possible.

thanks,

Kanwal

George Villagaray_5mdnu6 · Answer

I stumbled into this, but it sounds like a project process issue.  Epic and Feature are the same quality of project deliverable.  They different (probably in duration) over scope, from what I've found across many orgs.

The trick to Jira's agile aligned items are that:
Sub tasks are for user assignment and work tracking daily activities
Stories are for team assignment and work tracking weekly/2 week activities
All others are for reporting.  And that's the mixup, often I've worked for orgs that don't make that distinction and it causes PMs headaches with every project tool.

It's probably an unpopular opinion, but Jira was almost programmed to strictly enforce standard Agile PM process and the issue around Epics/Features/Capabilities etc, comes up every time someone wants a "status" report.  Most orgs don't adhere to PM standards and that's where the process to tool collision happens.

Steve Maiorano_ftvbv8 · Answer

That's all great but you still cannot create a hierarchy in JIRA of EPIC>Feature>Story>Sub because there is no Feature category which for the life of me is ridiculous that JIRA hasn't done that yet.  We've gotten around it by using New Feature issue type and linking Stories to it.  Of course you also need to link the epic.

unknown · Answer

Hi Kanwal,

You can find a lot of information about this in the community looking for it, but I'll help you a bit.

You need to understand what and Issue type is and what types of Issue types exist. Keynotes:

* 3 types of issue types: Epics, Standard, Subtasks
* Infine issue types: names

So, an Epic is always an Epic, but Stories, Bugs, Features, Tasks or even Subtasks can be an issue type with a Standard type, because the name doesn't matter.

This being said, Jira do not put Stories or Features one above the other. They are both Standard Issue types.

Also, Epic is only enabled if you have Jira Software and Subtasks must be enabled to use them.

How do you relate them?

There is a field called Epic link. If you add this to an issue, this issue will be under an Epic... It doesn't matter the issue type you use.

Subtasks are elements which are created inside an Issue. So, you need to go to an already created Issue and create subtasks for it. You can create as many subtasks as you want, and they can have a different name, just be sure you have created Issue types of Subtask Type.

Now, you need to configure your schemes. Go to the issue type scheme of your project and configure it as you want.

There is also another type of link, check issue link for more information.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/adding-editing-and-deleting-an-issue-type-scheme-844500754.html

https://www.atlassian.com/agile/tutorials/epics

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Is-Epic-Story-Sub-Task-the-recommended-hierarchy/qaq-p/103762

I hope this is not too confusing :)