is it best practice to assign a story to an epic when using Portfolio

[Ian Rutgers]

in building a portfolio plan many of my stories are assigned to epics, but some are not.  is it a best practice to assign all stories to epics for effective scheduling in JIRA Portfolio?

[Cristiano Oliveira]

Hi Ian! How are you doing?

I don't believe that creating Epics for every Story is a best practice.

It will pollute your Jira and your Portfolio Plans and Programs.

Hope this helps!

Cristiano

[Ian Rutgers]

I hear what you’re saying, thank you 😊 

[Nicolas Rimmer]

Hi,

We have found that if you don't make every story part of an epic people have got confused when using the Epic / Story filter in Portfolio. In the case where there are stories that are not part of Epics selecting the Epic filter gives a smaller result then when selecting Stories are as less is included. For now we are making every Story part of an Epic for this reason..... we tend to have a "Long Range" epic for this. We also do not enforce this rule on releases in the medium to long term.

I share the concerns raised about the proliferation of Epics.

Nick

[Ian Rutgers]

Thank you for your thoughts.  Your answer echoes my challenges.  Not every story needs to be part of an epic (else you subvert what an epic really is) and if I wasn’t using Jira Portfolio, I wouldn’t even think about it.  As I am being asked to employ Portfolio for planning purposes, I can see that the timeline getting cluttered with both epics and stories?