Hierarchy posibilites in Jira

[Glenn Andreas]

Hi,

EPIC -> Feature -> Story -> Task

An often used hierarchy when running agile projects. ADO supports it. 

How about Jira? As far as I can see, EPIC -> Story -> Task is possible to establish. 

Anyone who knows whats possible? 

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi Glenn - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

You will need a Premium subscription to go above Epic. And sorry, but it's actually Epic -> Story/Task -> Sub-task as the out of the box structure. Story and Task are at the same level and cannot be children of each other. 

[Glenn Andreas]

Thanks for your reply, and correction John:)

I will read through all the feedback provided in this string and figure out a way forward. I hope:) 

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Accepted solution]

Hi @Glenn Andreas

welcome to the community!

Just to expand on John and Walter's great answers:

If you decide to leverage Jira Premium's additional hierarchy levels to model your hierarchy, keep in mind that there are certain semantics associated with the default hierarchy levels (i.e., epic / base task / sub task), e.g. in how such issues are displayed in the Jira Software backlog view, etc. So while it is possible (and not uncommon) to rename the existing levels, I personally wouldn't recommend changing them, but to really only add levels on top.

As Walter mentioned, another option would of course be to use issue links. Issue links give you full flexibility on how you connect two issues to each other, and don't require Jira Premium. The downside is that Jira doesn't really "recognise" issue links as parent/child relationships - there are, however, various hierarchy-focused apps on the Atlassian Marketplace that can do so.

As an example, this is how how this could look using the app that my team and I are working on, JXL for Jira:

(I'm using an Epic/Story/Task/Sub-task hierarchy here, but it would work the same for the hierarchy you have in mind.)

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-task, or epic/story), and/or based on issue link of configurable issue link types.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes

[Glenn Andreas]

Thanks for this Hannes,

The set-up ypu show here is where I would like to go. Perhaps adding another top container though. 

In your set-up, can you "time-line" the Epics? 

I will explore further through the link you provided. 

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi Glenn,

it somewhat depends on what you expect to see - the epics would show up in Jira's built-in time line view (which I assume is what you're referring to), but this view wouldn't show the story/task nesting (as shown in my clip), since this nesting is "only" based on issue links. Depending on how you model your issues, it would probably show a flat list of stories and tasks below the respective epic.

That's really the one big downside of an issue-link based hierarchy: Jira's built-in views simply don't recognise issue links as parent/child relationships. Natively, Jira only understands the default, 3-level epic/base task/sub-task hierarchy, and if you have Jira Premium, any number of levels above epics.

For JXL specifically, we don't currently offer a Gantt/time-line-like view of your issues, although this is something we considering doing in the future.

Hope this helps!

[Amay Purohit_RVS · Accepted solution]

Hi @Glenn Andreas 

Welcome to the community !!

In Jira with premium subscription, you can create heirarchies above Epic. If you need to add levels below Epics, you can use issue links and create your own custom hierarchy. However to view this in a tree/hierarchy view you would need an app. There are many available in the mktplace. We have also built one on the same use case. 

Issue Hierarchy 

The app shows your hierarchy in a tree format and  also provides sum up at each level for time estimates and story points to track your project progress.

We have multiple filter options and also ability to use jql for child issues as well. Do try it out.

(Disclaimer: I work on RVS, the vendor for this app)

[Glenn Andreas]

Thanks for this Amay, 

I will explore the posibility further through the link you provided. 

Need to figure how to "purchase and install" as well I guess, working in a larger firm...:) 

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Glenn Andreas and welcome to the Community!

The standard hierarchy in Jira is:

    Epic

    -- > Standard issues types (Story, Bug, Task, ...)

    -- -- > Sub-Task issue types

These (bottom) levels are fixed and - as of today - can't be changed. So, out of the box, adding a task below a story won't work, nor does inserting a feature in between an Epic and a Story.

However, on a premium plan you can extend the hierarchy above the Epic levels with as many additional levels as you like. 

With the introduction of the feature to rename the default epic issue type to a name of your choosing, implementing the SAFe hierarchy has become a possibility when you are on a premium plan.

To learn more about recent changes in those areas, you might want to read up on these Community articles:

• Rename epics in company managed projects 
• Introducing the new parent field in company managed projects 

On top of what Jira has to offer out of the box today, the marketplace offers plenty of custom hierarchy apps that allow you to build custom hierarchies any way you want, in many cases leveraging Jira's issue linking features.

Hope this helps!

[Glenn Andreas]

Thanks for your reply, and shared links Walter. 

I will read up:)

[Michel Neeser · Accepted solution]

Hi @Glenn Andreas and welcome!

Jira supports three hierarchy levels by default: Epic > Story > Subtask.

If you need more levels, you can add these above the Epic level with the Plans feature in Jira Premium. You can find more information on this here.

Hope this helps!

[Nikola Perisic · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the community @Glenn Andreas 

• With Premium and Enterprise, you are able to change this hierarchy by adding and adjusting the levels. In order to see custom hierarchy level relationships in Jira Software issues, you must add the Parent field to your issues. 
• "By default, Jira Software comes with Epic as a level 1 issue type, and Story as a level 0 (subtasks are considered -1 or below Story). As part of your Jira Software Premium and Enterprise subscriptions, you can add levels above 1 and use these extra levels to track your organization’s larger initiatives in your plans and unify cross-project work."
• These changes can only by made by the Jira administrators
• Before you can plan with levels above epic, an administrator needs to first associate the hierarchy level in your plan with a Jira issue type. This is because your plan uses its own hierarchy structure which correlates to, but is independent from, the order of Jira issue types defined in your issue type scheme.

Also, as a prerequisite, you need to create an issue type,associate it to the scheme, then associate the issue type to your hierarchy.

Full guide can be found here: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/configure-custom-hierarchy-levels-in-advanced-roadmaps/

[shannon.rouisse]

 You can also use Epic->Task->Subtask