Can we add parent-child relationship between projects?

[Brittany]

I'm trying to add a task (child) from one project to a story (parent) in another project. Is this possible?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Brittany 

Welcome to the community.

You can use the generic issue linking functionality to link issues that exist in different projects.

However, what are you expecting when you say "parent/child"? The only parent/child relationships to which Jira attributes any special functionality is between Epics and the issues within them, and between issues and other issues of the specific Issue Type known as Subtask.

Tell us more about what you are trying to accomplish, and we can provide more specific feedback.

[Brittany]

This was helpful. I misunderstood which issue types were capable of the parent/child functionality. Thank you!

[Trudy Claspill]

Another note -

If you are using Team Managed projects, those don't allow you to specify parent/child relationships between issues in different projects.

Company Managed projects do allow you to have Epics and their child issues in separate projects.

And, the hierarchy of issues is

Epics < Story/Task/Bug/GenericIssue < Subtask issue types

Epics can also directly have subtasks, but that generally doesn't make sense to do.

You can create new issue types at the Story/Task/Bug/GenericIssue level (those are all "siblings") and at the Subtask level, but not at the Epic level.

If you need to extend the issue hierarchy, for instance having Initiatives be parents to Epics, you'll have to incorporate a roadmap/portfolio management app. Jira Cloud Standard does have a built in Roadmaps app, but that version doesn't allow you to extend the issue hierarchy.

[dorothea.schwarz]

I was hoping to find my answer here, but this seems to not be the case.

My question is:

Can a Sub-Task from Project A, be linked as a Child to a (Parent) Task in Project B?

Or do Sub-Tasks and Parent/Child relations work exklusively within one and the same Project?

Thanks.

[Dave Rosenlund _Trundl_]

Hi, @dorothea.schwarz.  It depends 🤪

I know. I hate that answer, too.

It can be done—yes. But it's not what Jira is expecting so unexpected things may happen.

See the response from @Trudy Claspill  (and my previous response from January below) for more insight.

Or, you could start a new thread with more of the details about your specific use case.

Hope this helps,

-dave

[dorothea.schwarz]

Hi @Dave Rosenlund _Trundl_ ,

thanks for getting back to me so fast.

I am not sure if this really helps as the response from @Trudy Claspill only states that generally Company Managed Projects allow relations between to separate projects.

We are using Company Managed Projects in our case, so that should allow my use case to work.

Still I am not able to find a way to link a Sub-Task from Project A to a Parent Task in Project B. I only get the option to create more Sub-Tasks under a parent, but they are always in the same project.

 

Can you explain to me, where I can link a Sub-Task from another project into this parent task ODHS-756 ?

In the sreenshot ODHS-759 should be from the IDHS-project and ODHS-760 should be from the PDHS-project to cover my use case.

Or are there some specialties in the settings that I need to enable this?

Thanks.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @dorothea.schwarz 

With the native functionality you cannot have the subtask in a different project than its parent issue. You can have a parent issue in Project A and when you create a subtask under it that sub task will always be in the same project.

You can use the generic Link Issue feature to create a link between that subtask and an issue in another project, but that does not change which issue is the subtask 's parent.

[dorothea.schwarz]

Thanks, this is what I am experiencing, but now I know that it is just not possible.

I already had the understanding that you can link (e.g. is blocked by, relates to, created by) across projects, but parent task and child sub-task are always in the same project by design.

[Stefan Seefeld]

I'm also looking into relationships at the project level. We are dealing with a couple of related projects and for our work planning (kanban or sprint) I would like the ability to include multiple such projects. Is that possible ?

[Dave Rosenlund _Trundl_]

Hi, @Stefan Seefeld.  Welcome back to the community 👋

The simple answer is, no. Not easily anyway. See @Trudy Claspill's explanation above. It's still valid.

Reason: Jira out-of-the-box is designed for a project, and the work contained in it. Yes, Jira may contain many projects, but you should assume Jira is optimized for each project — not the portfolio of projects or the relationships between them.

To achieve your goal, you have to creative and most likely use a project portfolio management solution, together with or on top of Jira. Atlassian offers Jira Align for this purpose, and Jira Advanced Roadmaps might help as well.

In addition, the Atlassian Marketplace has a number of purpose-built PPM apps that excel in this area.

Hope this helps,

-dave

P.S. Full disclosure: I work for a company that makes one of those marketplace apps. Structure.