How do we implement dual hierarchy in Advanced Roadmaps?

[Noah Sellars]

In our implementation of Jira several Business Units use the same Jira Instance

This means when we implement new Projects we are looking at customized workflows, schemes, custom field values, etc that meanst the needs of the specifci Business Unit or team.

We are now starting to use Jira to track our Portfolio.

To that end we are using Advanced roadmaps.  Again different Business units are using Advanced roadmaps

Many Teams have been using the standard Hierarchy

Subtask->Story->Epic->Initiative

With the introduction of managing the portfolio roadmap we have the desire to use this modified Hierarchy

Subtask->Story->Epic->Requirement->Initiative

As you know this breaks the other teams because it appears the Hierarchy is global in Advanced Roadmaps and not Plan or Program specific.

Further it, when the new hierarchy is implemented the prior relationship of the Epics->Initiative is lost because the other teams do not have Requirements in their hierarchy of issues.

Is there any recommend work around for this?

[Joseph Chung Yin · Accepted solution]

@Noah Sellars -

Hi Noah:

Unfortunately, you cannot have dual hierarchy setup for the same instance of your env.

My recommendation will be to set both "Requirement" and "Initiative" issue types to be at the same level within the hierarchy.  Meaning that Epic issue type can either roll-up to Requirement or Initiative.  This give you to provide ways to allow different teams to conduct the roll-up based on their needs.

Afterward, you can create another level above "Requirement" and "Initiative" issue types to roll-up.

Hope this makes sense.

Best, Joseph Chung Yin

Jira/JSM Functional Lead, Global Technology Applications Team

Viasat Inc.

[Noah Sellars]

@Joseph Chung Yin Can this be done within the  advanced roadmaps heirarchy configuration?

"My recommendation will be to set both "Requirement" and "Initiative" issue types to be at the same level within the hierarchy.  Meaning that Epic issue type can either roll-up to Requirement or Initiative.  This give you to provide ways to allow different teams to conduct the roll-up based on their needs."

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi @Noah Sellars

as already mentioned, you can always only have one parent (and therefore hierarchy) in Advanced Roadmaps. There are, however, a number of apps in the Atlassian Marketplace that are more flexible about this. These apps typically construct hierarchies based on issue links, or a combination of built-in parent/child relationships and issue links.

I can only speak for the app that my team is working on - JXL for Jira - but here, your use case would be trivial to implement. Pay attention to epic WORK-142:

Depending on your configuration, it's either a child of OKR-1, or a child of Initiative WORK-161. Our epic is connected to both of them via issue links. You can have as many hierarchy configurations as you want. 

For some more context, JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. It also comes with a number of advanced features, including the support for configurable issue hierarchies, sum-ups, or conditional formatting.

As mentioned above, there may be other apps that can help with that, too. You may already know that you can trial any app for free for 1 month, and depending on the size of your size, it may be free forever. So if an app is an option for your, perhaps try a few and see which works best for you.

Hope this helps,

Best,

Hannes