epics with children in different projects

[jeroen.wilmes]

To my best knowledge and confirmed in different questions in the community, Epics can NOT have children issues in more than one project.
However in the admin course I(ACP 610, chp 6 2:22) it is explained that it is possible.

If create a child, i don't see the option to choose for another project, that supports the fact that it is not possible.

What am I missing?

[Rik de Valk · Accepted solution]

Hi @jeroen.wilmes , it is possible to have child issues across multiple projects. Otherwise cross-team collaboration would be super-inefficient.

But if you create a child issue from the Epic view screen (by hitting the + sign) it will create the child in the same project as the Epic.

So to create an child issue in a project other than the Epic's project, you'll have to hit the Create button, choose the desired project and link it to the Epic using the Epic Link field.

One other 'issue' with working with cross-project Epics (that I can think of) is that the Epic panel of a Scrum Board will not show any Epics from other projects even if you've linked some of your issues to it; unless you specifically include that Epic in the Board filter (project = YOURPROJECT OR key = EPICKEY-123)

[jeroen.wilmes]

Thanks Rik for your help. I was aware of that kind of linking. It makes a link of a parent/child type but is doesn't create a hierarchical relation. the issues don't show up in the roadmaps and indeed it needs special board filters to set apart from other issues in a project that are not related to that other project. But now for me it is at least clear that I'm not overlooking something.

[Rik de Valk]

Well actually it does create the same hierarchical relation. But you can only really work with that relation if you also have Advanced Roadmaps, which is included in Jira Cloud Premium.

Roadmaps are single-project. Advanced Roadmaps is multi-project and allows for more hierarchy above the Epic as well.

[David Wuth]

@jeroen.wilmes We have epics with children in other projects. In Advanced Roadmaps or in any boards/queries we use, we have found that we must include all projects in order to see the relationships. For sprint boards we decided to use the component field when children were in other projects, and then have the sprint filter include the other project issues only when the component was a specific value. Same for the issue source in Advance Roadmaps - use the component + project  in a filter to pull in child issues from other projects (if you only want to see the related work and not everything from all projects). Note that if you include child issues of other scrum projects, they may be in different sprints. When that happens your sprint board will include a new drop-down next to the quick filters to enable you to select a specific sprint, or all sprints.

[jeroen.wilmes]

Yes, I'm aware of the functionalities of Advances roadmaps. What I don't like is that trainings, demo's etc. give the impression that you can work with across team parent/child relations in Jira, not mentioning the difference between a hierarchical parent/child relation and the link types.

Jira standard has the levels: Epic, Tasks and Subtask, if you want more then you need Advanced Roadmaps. 

[David Wuth]

Yes, Jira standard is very limited. It was very frustrating for us to find that to get more out of Jira we had to upgrade to Premium and also purchase several key apps. BTW, if you do not have Premium, you may want to consider Structure (https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/34717/structure-flexible-jira-project-management?tab=overview&hosting=cloud). Yes, it is an app you have to purchase, but it may give you more of what you need.