Can I make an Initiative in Jira Software the Parent of an Idea?

[Lucia Bayly]

I want to use Product Discovery to handle non-Engineering Epics, and Stories; that way I can use Jira to manage all of my delivery "lanes" and not only those involving engineers. But due to my organization's rules, all issues need to have as Parent, an initiative in our Org's project.

[Nick Haller · Accepted solution]

Hi @Lucia Bayly ,

A few features like this are on the JPD public roadman - such as the Idea hierarchies or even the Roadmaps / cross-project views - but no real ETA on when these will be released.

In the meantime, you may want to leverage Jira for this, or even just link JPD ideas together.

[Riku.Kristersson]

You can't link JPD idea to another in delivery tab but if you use "link issue" feature and link JPD issue to another JPD idea using "implements" option it will be shown in delivery tab and it behaves like it is parent/child issue. We use this method when we have some program/project/initiative that the ideas are implementing. We also have "initiative type" field where we can label issue as "parent" and that way have views that only show parent initiatives (or only child ideas). 

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Lucia Bayly and welcome to the Community!

I don't think so, to be honest. The only issue type available in JPD is an idea, which is a standard issue type at the same hierarchy level as stories, bugs, tasks and so on. You can't change that, nor add additional issue types in there. You can link delivery work (consisting of epics and their child issues) to ideas in JPD and track delivery progress from the idea, however.

I am not sure why not being able to link ideas to initiatives would be blocking you to track non-engineering epics and stories in Jira, though. It is what you put in the summary, description and other fields that define what needs to happen, and who you assign to them that determines if they become engineering or other work, no? Both engineering and non-engineering epics can be linked to initiatives - you wouldn't need JPD for that.

Hope this helps!