Stories and Tasks

Question

We are currently moving from Azure DevOps to Jira Software.

Currently we are running into an issue were stories and tasks are at the same level (L2). This is problem because we want to use tasks and assign them to "user stories".

The reason sub-tasks do not work for use is because of how our standup meetings are structured. We would like to move around our tasks and not have to navigate through the UI to get to sub tasks...

Has anyone encountered this and what was the fix?

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

Hi @Austin Stone,

just to add to Trudy's answer, here's how this could look in the Marketplace app that my team and I are working on, JXL for Jira:

For context, JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues 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 support for (configurable) issue hierarchies. These issue hierarchies can be based on Jira's built-in parent/child relationships (like task/sub-tasks, or epic/story), and/or based on issue links of configurable issue link types.

In the example above, I'm using issue links of type is child of / is parent of to model the story/task relationship you're looking for.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes

Amay Purohit_RVS · Answer

Hi @Austin Stone

You can use issue links to create your own hierarchy at any level. If you would like to try out a mktplace app, please take a look at an add-one have developed for the same use case.

Issue Hierarchy

The app shows your issues , their subtasks and the linked issues as well in a simple and easy to use tree view, with progress at each parent level. In the example below we have created a task below a sub task using issue links.

Disclaimer : I am part of the team which developed this app

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Austin Stone

Unfortunately what you want is simply not possible with native Jira functionality.

The native issue hierarchy is

Epic
|-- standard level issues
    |-- sub-task level issues

Jira does not support adding another level within that structure. And issues at the same level cannot leverage the native parent/child relationship hierarchy.

The work around is that you can use generic issue linking to link a Task to a Story and name the link relationship in a way to indicate that the Task is "a child of" the Story. But Jira will not inherently recognize that as a parent/child relationship.

With a Premium subscription you can add more issue hierarchy levels above the Epic level. In that case you could consider treating your Epics as "stories" with the Tasks being children of them, and add another 1..n levels above the Epics.

Alternately you can look for a third party app that will give you more flexibility in establishing parent/child relationships between issue types.