Why can't I create a simple "folder with sub-folders" system of my need (typically matching the epic-story-task-subtask), without jumping through ridiculously shaped hoops? Why does it have to be hard to set up a hierarchy matching my need?
Hi Usman - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!
Probably because the structure you described is not standard Agile hierarchy. Stories and Tasks sit at the same level - tasks are not children of Stories. But having a simple standard Agile structure of Epic > Story > Sub-task and Epic > Task > Sub-task is indeed built into Jira.
Welcome @Usman Gani Shams
Since you have the Premium tier, you can modify your hierarchy. You can find the full guide here: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/configure-the-issue-type-hierarchy/
Doesn't work. I am looking for the following hierarchy:
Epic-> User Story-> Tasks-> Sub-tasks
This should be simple enough if I can create a new level called "Story" and place it between Epic (Level 1) and tasks/stories (Level 0)
However, creating a new issue type hierarchy by default places it at level 2. Cannot be changed. So how can I introduce a new issue type hierarchy that sits between Epics and Stories/tasks.
Give me the flexibility to define hierarchy which works best for me and my org. Why can't I change the default Issue type hierarchy level?
You cannot put a new issue type hierarchy between the Epics and Stories since this was defined by the Agile methodology where it's stated structure is Epics - Stories - Tasks - Sub-tasks.
There can't be a hirerarchy defined between the Epics and Stories.
More info: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/epics-stories-themes
If it helps save me time and reduces friction in ticket management, why not enable it?
Based on my experience with Jira, there's a whole lot of back-end work that Atlassian has implemented that enforces the hierarchy where nothing can come between an Epic and a Story and only sub-task issue types can be under anything at the Story level. Additionally sub-task issue types cannot be the parent of a sub-task (although those sub-task issue types can be children of any standard issue type).
As mentioned before, this is something that you would need to raise with Atlassian support, although I can pretty much guarantee that they are not going to completely re-write Jira in order to accommodate this request.
That clarifies a lot! Not sure why they would do this though.
I come from Azure Dev Ops and you can configure ADO in any way possible. I believe the default is Epic-> Story-> task-> subtask. The only downside is you get sucked in to the M365 walled garden and its difficult to proceed without being on Office.
You can setup a custom hierarchy if you have a Premium Subscription. But like @Matt Parks says, there is a lot of backend processing/functionality built into Jira based on Agile best practices. Many people replace Epics with Features and move the Epic above the Feature (there's a right way to do this in Jira to make it work), and even put Initiatives above the Epic, so that it looks like Initiative > Epic > Feature > Story/Task > Sub-task.
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